[APWG] STUDY: Forecasting Weed Distributions using Climate Data: A GIS Early Warning Tool

[Olivia Kwong]

http://www2.allenpress.com/pdf/ipsm-03-04-365-375.pdf

Forecasting Weed Distributions using Climate Data: A GIS Early Warning Tool
Catherine S. Jarnevich, Tracy R. Holcombe, David T. Barnett, Thomas J. 
Stohlgren, and John T. Kartesz

The number of invasive exotic plant species establishing in the United 
States is continuing to rise. When prevention of exotic species from 
entering into a country fails at the national level and the species 
establishes, reproduces, spreads, and becomes invasive, the most 
successful action at a local level is early detection followed by 
eradication. We have developed a simple geographic information system 
(GIS) analysis for developing watch lists for early detection of invasive 
exotic plants that relies upon currently available species distribution 
data coupled with environmental data to aid in describing coarse-scale 
potential distributions. This GIS analysis tool develops environmental 
envelopes for species based upon the known distribution of a species 
thought to be invasive and represents the first approximation of its 
potential habitat while the necessary data are collected to perform more 
indepth analyses. To validate this method we looked at a time series of 
species distributions for 66 species in Pacific Northwest and northern 
Rocky Mountain counties. The time series analysis presented here did 
select counties that the invasive exotic weeds invaded in subsequent 
years, showing that this technique could be useful in developing
watch lists for the spread of particular exotic species. We applied this 
same habitat-matching model based upon bioclimatic envelopes to 100 
invasive exotics with various levels of known distributions within 
continental U.S. counties. For species with climatically limited 
distributions, county watch lists describe county-specific vulnerability
to invasion. Species with matching habitats in a county would be added to 
that county.s list. These watch lists can influence management decisions 
for early warning, control prioritization, and targeted research to 
determine specific locations within vulnerable counties. This tool 
provides useful information for rapid assessment of the potential
distribution based upon climate envelopes of current distributions for new 
invasive exotic species.

See the link above for a PDF of the article in Invasive Plant Science & 
Management.