Habitat type and community age as barriers to alien plant invasions in coastal species-habitat networks

Evaluating Plant Invasions from Both Habitat and Species Perspectives

—We present an approach to quantitatively assess nonnative plant invasions at landscape scales from both habitat and species perspectives. Our case study included 34 nonnative species found in 142 plots (0.1 ha) in 14 vegeta-tion types within the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Utah. A plot invasion index, based on nonnative species richness and cover, showed that only 16 of 142 pl...

Habitat Fragmentation and Species Barriers

The use of plant community attributes to detect habitat quality in coastal environments

The monitoring of biodiversity has mainly focused on the species level. However, researchers and land managers are making increasing use of complementary assessment tools that address higher levels of biological organization, i.e. communities, habitats and ecosystems. Recently, a variety of frameworks have been proposed for assessing the conservation status of communities or ecosystems. Among t...

Ensemble habitat mapping of invasive plant species.

Ensemble species distribution models combine the strengths of several species environmental matching models, while minimizing the weakness of any one model. Ensemble models may be particularly useful in risk analysis of recently arrived, harmful invasive species because species may not yet have spread to all suitable habitats, leaving species-environment relationships difficult to determine. We...

Invasive Plants and Wildlife Habitat Invasive Plants and Wildlife Habitat Effects of Plant Invasions on Wildlife in Desert Grasslands

Like all grasslands across North America, the distribution of desert grasslands has been reduced markedly, and remnants have been altered extensively by humans. In Arizona, NewMexico, Texas, USA, and in Mexico, desert grasslands have been invaded by dozens of non-native plants, especially perennial grasses that evolved in arid systems with similar climate and disturbance regimes. In desert gras...