Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative

Assessing the risk of invasive plant introductions at trailheads in the Adirondack Park, NY: Invasive plant transfer risk scores

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Metadata Provider

  • Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative

    • Address:
      705 Spear Street
      South Burlington, Vermont 05403
      United States of America

      Phone: (802) 391-4135
      Email: femc@uvm.edu
      Website: www.uvm.edu/femc

Abstract

    The Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative (FEMC) collaborated with Dr. Colin Beier (SUNY-ESF) and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to expand on the work by Rockefeller (2016) and Larkin (2017) to examine the risk of invasive plant propagule transport by visitors to trailheads in the Adirondack Park, NY. The Adirondack Park contains over 300 trailheads, each usually has a parking area for visitors and a trail register for each party to record their location of origin. As visitors may travel from areas outside the Park, there is a risk that visitors could unwillingly transport invasive plants on boot treads, dog fur, or clothing that could become established in the Park. While this work only includes visitor data from 2012, it provides valuable information on the possible travel routes, hotspots, and vulnerabilities in invasive plant management in the park. Additionally, summary information on visitor use and travel distances can help with resource allocation and planning.

People

  • Alexandra Kosiba: Principal Investigator

  • James Duncan: Content Provider

  • Emma Tait: Content Provider

  • Colin Beier: Content Provider

  • Justin Perry: Content Provider

  • Matthias Sirch: Content Provider

Keywords

  • exotic plants, transportation,

Organizations

  • Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative (FEMC) : lead
  • NYC Department of Environmental Conservation : partner
  • The State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry: partner

Geographic Coverage

  • Coordinates

    Data Table

    • Title: Invasive plant transfer risk scores
    • Start Date: 2019-08-01
    • End Date: 2020-01-31
    • Description: Following the methods of Rockefeller (2016), we computed a transfer risk potential per invasive species per trailhead. For each trailhead, we computed the total number of visitors per town by summing the group size in origin data by town and trail register. Using these data, we computed a trail-town exposure score: the amount of potential exposure per species to each trailhead per town. We computed this score by multiplying the species’ total number of observations per town and the number of visitors per town. From these values, we computed a raw total exposure potential per species per trailhead by summing the trail-town exposure score across all towns. We log-transformed the raw total exposure score due to its skewed distribution and then normalized these values based on a pooled distribution of the scores across all trailheads. This resulted in transfer risk potential score per species per trailhead. It can be interpreted as the relative risk of that invasive plant species being inadvertently transported to that location.

    • Purpose: To link invasive plant observations summed by town, coupled with the visitor origins and trailhead destinations to examine the possible risk of plant transfer to trailheads in the Adirondack Park.

    • Condensed Title: Z1627_3230_YYJ8KW

    • Object Name: VMC.1627.3230

    • Data Type: mySQL
    • Citation: Kosiba AM and Tait E. (2020) Invasive plant transfer risk scores. FEMC. Available online at: https://www.uvm.edu/femc/data/archive/project/adktrailheads/dataset/invasive-plant-transfer-risk-scores

    • Online Distribution: https://vmc.w3.uvm.edu/vmcdevel/data/archive/project/adktrailheads/dataset/invasive-plant-transfer-risk-scores

    Attribute List

      Attribute Name: SpeciesCommonName
      • Label: SpeciesCommonName
      • Description: The primary common name of the species from the invasive species table
      • Storage Type: text
      • Measurment Type: nominal
      Attribute Name: SpeciesLogScore
      • Label: SpeciesLogScore
      • Description: Log normalized raw total exposure potential per species per trailhead
      • Storage Type: decimal
      • Measurment Type: ratio
      • Precision: 1e-17
      Attribute Name: SpeciesNormalizedScore
      • Label: SpeciesNormalizedScore
      • Description: Normalized species log score based on a pooled distribution of the scores across all trail heads
      • Storage Type: decimal
      • Measurment Type: ratio
      • Precision: 1e-17
      Attribute Name: SpeciesScientificName
      • Label: SpeciesScientificName
      • Description: The primary scientific name of the species from the invasive species table
      • Storage Type: text
      • Measurment Type: nominal
      Attribute Name: TrailName
      • Label: TrailName
      • Description: Full trail name from the trail destinations table
      • Storage Type: text
      • Measurment Type: nominal

    Methods

    • No methods recorded for this dataset

    Sampling Equipment

    • No sampling equipment recorded for this dataset

    Site Characteristics

    • No site characteristics recorded for this dataset