Geometric insights into managing breaches of containment and eradication of invasive plants

Although containment is frequently advocated as a fall-back option for eradication, analysis shows that it is not necessarily more economic or effective. While containment has one major advantage over eradication, in that a smaller area is managed, this must be balanced against its disadvantage; that it must continue indefinitely. Moreover, both containment and eradication programs are at risk of breaches of the management unit, and each management strategy incurs different additional costs if they experience a breach. Here, we use graphical illustrations of the net present costs of management to provide some simple geometric insights into managing breaches of containment and eradication of populations of invasive plants.