Open Marsh Water Management A Source Reduction Technique for Mosquito Control

In Delaware, mosquito control is performed through the multi-disciplinary techniques of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) that advocates and practices (in this preferential order): 1) source reduction (elimination of mosquito breeding sites); 2) surveillance (determining mosquito population sizes and in turn directing the need and specific areas for control by insecticides); 3) larviciding (controlling immature mosquitoes at the aquatic stages when they are highly susceptible using EPA-registered insecticides); and lastly 4) adulticiding (controlling adult mosquitoes using EPAregistered insecticides). While source reduction is the preferred method of mosquito control, in some situations and specific circumstances, source reduction is not a viable method of mosquito control; and as such, other forms of control such as larviciding and adulticiding must be employed. The remainder of this article discusses the techniques of source reduction on coastal saltmarshes.