Invasive plant species cover and site characteristics across select United States cities

Thursday, September 19, 2024

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM MST

Location: McKee Hall

Speaker(s)

Tonya Lister, MS (she/her/hers)

Research Forester
USDA Forest Service
Downingtown, Pennsylvania, United States
Laura Hanna, MS (she/her/hers)

FIA Database Analyst
Colorado State University, United States

Co-Author(s)

AL

Andrew Lister, PhD (he/him/his)

Research Forester
USDA Forest Service, Pennsylvania, United States

Urban Forest Inventory and Analysis data are used to characterize invasive species cover in select northern US cities. Summaries of the 2021 inventory will be presented, as well as examples of how simple machine learning models can be built using the data to predict likelihood of occurrence of invasive species.

Learning Objectives:

understand the mission of the urban FIA program and learn what data are available and how to access them.
describe the extent of invasive species cover, what species are most prevalent, how invasive species cover varies by city across the northern region, and characterize commonly-occurring groupings of invasive species using vegetation ecology principles
gain insight into what land and vegetation conditions are associated with the presence of invasive species and how those data might be used to predict where invasive species could be found.