Nitesh Tripathi
Friday, October 17, 2008 - 2:00-2:30
Florida has become the national epicenter of alien plant introductions. Millions of acres of forestland in the region are being occupied by alien invasive plants, threatening their ecological and economic integrity. Early detection of invasions and quick coordinated responses are needed to contain invasive species. Besides traditional control strategies no effort for predicting future invasions is known in the region. Predicting vulnerable areas for future invasions is important to the success of rapid detection. Complex interactions among introduced species, managed and intensely harvested forests, urban sprawl and climate change compound this forecasting problem. Natural resource professionals involved in combating the invasives need a tool to predict "hot spots" of future invasions and respond to eliminate them. We used species occurrence points and ecological niche modeling to predict hot spots of invasion by two exotic species of forests in Florida- cogon grass (Imperata cylindrica) and Japanese climbing fern (Lygodium japonicum) using Blackwater river state forest in north Florida as the study site. We tested the hypotheses that occurrence of invasive species on the landscape was closely associated with specific landscape features, land use patterns, and disturbance events. We concluded that the hotspots or future sites of invasion can be predicted accurately so that the limited resources available to combat the invasion can be used wisely. The model could be calibrated and used for the entire state of Florida or elsewhere in the southeastern U.S and could serve as a tool to predict invasion patterns of other invasive plants in the region.
Keywords: COGON GRASS, JAPANESE CLIMBING FERN, ECOLOGICAL MODELING, PREDICTING INVASION POTENTIAL, FLORIDA