Until now, the lack of cost-effective analytical tools (i.e., low cost and not overly complex GIS) has been a major impediment to the research of spatial variation of insect, disease, and weed pests.  The wide-ranging applicability of GIS has been reflected by the recent movement of GIS from the domain of geography departments and government institutional concerns to virtually all areas of natural and human sciences.  While most applications in IPM have concerned pest species that are managed over large areas, GIS is also suitable for addressing spatial problems at the scale of a field (Drapek 1993, Coop et al. 1994) and even a single leaf (MacRae 1994).  At the scale of regional/ecosystem integration, GIS can now greatly improve policy and strategic approaches to pest management and decision making.  This development is due in part because IPM has evolved rapidly to include greater consideration of the physical and biological bases underlying environmental processes (Saarenmaa 1992).  The use of GIS, when coupled with geostatistics, is also becoming an important tool in understanding underlying processes of population dispersion, dispersal, and gene flow (Liebhold et al. 1993).  Geostatistics is used for the description of spatial patterns and for estimating values at unsampled locations.  As geostatistical tools are increasingly integrated with GIS software, and as these resources are simplified and made more readily available and less expensive, these new technologies can reach a much wider audience, including researchers and pest managers at the multi-farm and community level.

Practical applications of GIS in codling moth management  is still needed to expand to address aspects like codling moth monitoring design, description, and understanding of infestation patterns, pest and biological control agent dispersal behavior, spatial effects on crop damage susceptibility, and spatial statistics.  Based on these factors, a well-informed monitoring, analysis, and decision-making process can be developed for all levels of codling moth management integration.