Journal
BIOLOGICAL INVASIONS
Volume 11, Issue 10, Pages 2317-2328Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10530-008-9418-8
Keywords
Land use history; Remote sensing; Invasive species; Agricultural land use; Berberis thunbergii; Celastrus orbiculatus
Categories
Funding
- United States Department of Agriculture for the Invasive Plant Atlas of New England (Silander)
- Connecticut College Space Grant Consortium (Mosher)
- National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program
- University of California Davis Department of Plant Sciences (Latimer)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Land-use history as a predictor of invasive alien plant distributions has received little study, especially across large spatial and temporal scales. Here we evaluate the importance of land-use history and other environmental characteristics as predictors of the distributions of a suite important invasive woody plant species in the northeastern United States. Using historical aerial photographs, we delineated 69 years (1934-2003) of land-use change across a typically heterogeneous 95 km(2) landscape. We randomly surveyed over 500 sites for six invasive plant species. We found that land use history patterns strongly affected presence and abundance of the invasive plants as a group, but affected some species more than others. Generally, past agricultural use favored invasive species, whereas intact forest blocks discouraged them. Current land-use trends toward residential/commercial development favor disturbance-adapted species like Celastrus orbiculatus (asiatic bittersweet) and will probably slow the spread of post-agricultural specialists such as Berberis thunbergii (Japanese barberry).
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available