Collaboration Opportunity

National Invasive Species Database

Land managers consider invasive species one of their greatest challenges. The economic cost of invasive non-native plants, animals, and diseases exceeds $138 billion per year, more than the damage caused by other natural disasters, such as flood and fires, combined. Invasive species are poisoning livestock, altering fire regimes, clogging waterways, altering nutrient cycling, and causing the demise of as many as 40 percent of the species listed as “Threatened and Endangered.” Nearly all terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are now affected by invasive species.

The U.S. Geological Survey has partnered with other agencies and research programs, including LTER to establish a “data cooperative” to accelerate the sharing, standardization, completeness, and accessibility of data on the distribution and abundance of non-native plants, animals, and diseases across the U.S. The National Institute of Invasive Species Science is a quickly growing consortium of strong partnerships between government and non-governmental organizations administratively housed in the U.S. Geological Survey’s Fort Collins Science Center in Colorado. The Institute represents one of six primary focus areas of the Fort Collins Science Center, with Tom Stohlgren as the Science Program Director.

The Institute has the expertise to develop cost-efficient and information-rich interdisciplinary approaches to inventory and monitoring methods. This approach integrates multi-phase designs, with multi-scale field sampling to provide more consistent, accurate, and complete data at local, regional, and national scales. Information about invasive species found across the U.S. will be distributed through the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). http://www.nbii.gov/index.html

Tom Stohlgren, other researchers, and information managers at the Institute will focus on information management, research, modeling, technical assistance, and outreach. The first goal is to synthesize pre-exisitng data sets, including multiple scale information (i.e., 1 m² to entire region), on non-native vascular plant species obtained from individuals, organizations, and agencies at all levels in a spatially linked database.

All LTER Network sites will be asked to contribute to the development of this database. For example, state and county officials in Colorado, land mamagement and conservation programs, as well as information managers from the SGS and NWT LTER sites are submitting their existing and legacy data sets on invasive plant species. In this way, collective knowledge created by data synergy can be used to improve the quality of individual data sets collected across the state of Colorado. Data sets for recorded locations for non-native plant species are now available to land managers and the public using online GIS technology. In addition, the synthesized, spatially linked database can be used to create predictive spatial models for hotspots of invasion in the state of Colorado or in a specific land management unit (for example, see: http://www.nrel.colostate.edu/projects/niiss/projects/colorado/colorado.htm).

The Institute’s information management system is designed to expand in detail as the program grows. Spatial, hierarchical tables in geodatabases (ArcGIS and MSAccess or Oracle) and new spatial analysis tools, will allow for multi-scale analyses, interactive queries, and multiscale graphics. A web-based interface will allow customers and stakeholders to access and manipulate a variety of databases, GIS themes, and predictive spatial models at local and regional scales without having extensive hardware, software, or access to experts.

The Institute will continue to develop control and restoration techniques for severely affected areas and for the most invasive species. Research is already underway in many wetland, riparian, and aquatic ecosystems where invasive species have become dominant. Monitoring and modeling techniques will help set priorities for control and restoration. On a national scale, invasive plant control techniques published by The Nature Conservancy, individual states, and others will be linked to the NBII.

This is an opportunity for the LTER community to cooperate with other agencies and non-governmental organizations, and to contribute their data to the development of a data synthesis project that will help to document, map, predict, and manage the invasion of non-native plants, animals, and diseases across the U.S.

For more information: Thomas J. Stohlgren, USGS National Institute of Invasive Species Science, Phone: 970-491-1980, e-mail: Tom_Stohlgren@USGS.gov