Plant invasions are context-dependent: multiscale effects of climate, human activity and habitat

Aim Understanding the conditions that promote biological invasions is a critical step to developing successful management strategies. However, the level of invasion is affected by complex interactions among environmental factors that might change across habitats and regions making broad generalizations uninformative for management. We aimed to quantify the context-dependent association of climate and human activity at landscape scale (i.e. disturbance and propagule pressure) with the level of plant invasion at local scale across different stages of invasion, habitat types and bioclimatic regions. Location Mainland Spain. Methods Based on an extensive database of vegetation plots (~50,000), we used hierarchical Bayesian models to test how climate and human activity at a landscape scale (i.e. land-cover variables) are associated with establishment (i.e. presence) and dominance (i.e. relative species richness and abundance in invaded plots) of non-native plants across nine habitat types and three bioclimatic regions. Results The association of climate with establishment and dominance of non-native plants varied depending on habitat type but not bioclimatic region. These associations also varied depending on the stage of invasion under consideration. Establishment of non-native species was more likely close to the coast, while their dominance increased in wet and warm continental areas. Human activity variables were associated with establishment and dominance similarly across bioclimatic regions. Non-native species establishment and abundance peaked in human-altered landscapes. Different habitats showed different susceptibilities to establishment versus dominance by non-native species (e.g. woodlands had medium levels of establishment, but very low dominance). Main conclusions This study highlights how complex interactions among climate, human activity and habitats can determine patterns of invasions across broad landscapes. Successful management of plant invasions will depend on understanding these context-dependent effects across habitats at the different stages of the invasion process.