2014 Wrap Up

With 35 miles of invasive plants mapped along roads in Jericho, Bolton and Richmond, I am feeling really proud of this project already. I am excited to get the observations in to a cleaned up map to tell some stories. Already there are a number of messages that can be quickly gleaned from the observations:

1. Honeysuckle and buckthorn are everywhere. We know these plants impact the forest. The way the mapping has been done will help shed light on the role that roads play in introducing invasive plants to otherwise intact forest. This can be helpful information when grappling with issues like fragmentation, subdivision and zoning policy, invasive plant management on parcel and community scales.
2. Some plants like barberry, glossy buckthorn, multiflora rose and bittersweet are much more isolated than honeysuckle and buckthorn. Folks who own land on the edges of infestations of these species will be able to play a role in slowing the spread of these plants, and prevent further establishment even if some of the the more widespread invasive plants are established.
3. A few seemingly isolated species were identified. Tree of Heaven and European spindle tree are a couple that come to mind. The detection of these species presents opportunities to learn about the threat they pose, communicate with landowners and pursue monitoring and control measures if appropriate.

For everybody that has contributed over the last few months, thank you. NR 206 folks, thank you for entering so many observations! We'll continue our good work on this. Charlie and Kyle, thank you for checking out these observations, giving feedback, and taking much of this work to research grade! In the past couple of weeks we've had a few other folks come on board, contributing past observations to this project. Welcome, and I hope that you keep contributing!

Posted on November 2, 2014 11:08 PM by kothomps