[APWG] STUDY: Forecasting Weed Distributions using Climate Data: A GIS Early Warning Tool
Olivia Kwong
plant at plantconservation.org
Thu Dec 16 08:58:10 CST 2010
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.
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