Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
h e challenge of risk assessments for invasive species is compounded by the demand-
ing requirements it places on information science and technology. Information
must be immediately available on species locations and abundance, the ecology,
and natural history of a species, and on the characteristics of favourable habitats.
h ese are non-trivial information management problems (Graham
et al
. 2007).
Humans play a crucial role in the assembly and fi ltering of this type of information,
but technological advances are helping to synthesize available information from
the Internet, make available downloadable datasets, and making data ready for
easy input into analysis tools. h is process of creating higher-order understanding
from dispersed datasets is a fundamental intellectual process in any strategy for
risk assessment.
h e challenge of understanding taxonomic, geographic, and temporal com-
pleteness of data in a region of concern translates into a requirement to systematic-
ally catalogue 'metadata' knowledge about the information used in analyses. h ese
metadata are a crucial aspect of all scientifi c databases.
Risk assessments for globally invasive species will require an unprecedented
level of integration of 'living maps' of harmful species along with fi eld-based
environmental measurements and new remote sensing data products (Morisette
et al
. 2006). New geostatistical modelling approaches are needed at landscape-
or watershed-scales to regional and continental scales, requiring the use of high-
performance computing. Estimating the potential rate of spread of an invasive
species, and the probable risks, impacts, and costs associated with that species,
may require entirely new approaches to predictive modelling in space and time—
models that combine temporal, spatial, stochastic, mechanistic, socioeconomic,
and scenario-based approaches. Comprehensive risk assessment for invasive spe-
cies remains largely uncharted territory. Finally, aggregating this information in
ways that allow decision-makers to systematically evaluate containment potential,
costs, opportunity costs, and make reasoned trades against legal mandates and
social considerations will require a new generation of decision support environ-
ments tailored to the needs of invasive species risk analysis (Graham
et al
. 2007).
priority sites
Managers responsible for invasive species often ask two simple questions: where is
it, and how do I kill it? h e underlying challenge is to select priority species for con-
trol in a constantly changing triage approach to risk assessment (Fig. 2.1). A fi rst
cut is to target frequently occurring, highly abundant invasive species. At present,
some widespread species for which there is little hope of containment or control
might have to be put on the back burner, while currently easily contained species
get our attention. Local and regional decisions and priorities on species and sites
