Benefits of hyperspectral remote sensing for tracking plant invasions

Human activities such as international trade and travel promote biological invasions by accidentally or deliberately dispersing species outside their native biogeographical ranges (Lockwood, 2005; Alpert, 2006). Invasive species are now viewed as a significant component of global change and have become a serious threat to natural communities (Mack et al., 2000; Pyšek & Richardson, 2010). The ecological impact of invasive species has been observed in all types of ecosystems. Typically, invaders can change the niches of co-occurring species, alter the structure and function of ecosystems by degrading native communities and disrupt evolutionary processes through anthropogenic movement of species across physical and geographical barriers (D’Antonio & Vitousek, 1992; Mack et al., 2000; Richardson et al., 2000; Levine et al., 2003; Vitousek et al., 2011). Concerns for the implications and consequences of successful invasions have stimulated a considerable amount of research. Recent invasion research ranges from the developing testable hypotheses aimed at understanding the mechanisms of invasion to providing guidelines for control and management of invasive species. Several recent studies have used hyperspectral remote sensing (Underwood et al., 2003; Lass et al., 2005; Underwood Department of Biological Sciences, Murray State University, Murray, KY 42071, USA, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Research and Innovation Centre, Department of Biodiversity and Molecular Ecology, GIS and Remote Sensing Unit, Via E. Mach 1, 38010 S. Michele all’Adige, TN, Italy, Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change, Indiana University, 408 N. Indiana Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47408, USA, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Royal Enclave, Srirampura, Jakkur Post, Bangalore 560064, India