NREL Seminar
Friday, September 26, 2008, 11:00 AM

The Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) fall seminar series, Scaling up, Across, and Over Time in Ecology, is hosting its third lecture, Modeling Invasive Species Distributions at Multiple Scales.

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Third lecture in series to feature Sunil Kumar, NREL

This NREL lecture will be presented on Friday, Sept. 26 from 11 a.m. to noon in B 215 Natural and Environmental Sciences Building.  The speaker is Sunil Kumar, NREL. 

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The ripple effect of invasive species

Invasive species are adversely affecting the native habitats and severely threatening native biodiversity; ecosystem structure and function; human health; and economic or environmental goods and services.

Therefore, accurate spatial prediction of habitats that are likely to be invaded by non-native species is urgently required to:

guide field crews and policymakers

identify priority areas for early detection and rapid response

evaluate the cost-effectiveness of monitoring and control programs

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Use of more than one modeling method has advantages

Most invasive species modeling studies generally look at a single modeling method.  However, we have learned that a single method may not be appropriate for all species because models that work for habitat specialists may not work for generalists.

This talk will describe some of the invasive species distribution modeling approaches and show examples of how field observations can be integrated with environmental variables to predict invasive species distributions.

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Presence-only methods

The talk will discuss the uses of presence-only methods (e.g. Maxent [maximum entropy modeling], GARP [Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Prediction]) and presence-absence methods (e.g. logistic regression; classification and regression trees [CART]) for predicting invasive plants (Cheatgrass and Tamarisk), pathogens (Sudden Oak Death, White Pine Blister Rust), and a freshwater diatom (Didymosphenia geminate, or didymo), in the United States.

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EVENT CONTACT

Contact Laurie Richards at laurie@nrel.colostate.edu.