Bibliographic Information: Allen, J.M., Leininger, T.J., Hurd, J.D. et al. Landscape Ecol (2013) Socio-economics drive woody invasive plant richness in New England, USA through forest fragmentation. 28: 1671. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-013-9916-7.
The research objectives of this paper are:
- To determine the strength and direction relationship between forest fragmentation and woody invasive plant richness.
2. To use selected socioeconomic and environmental factors to explain the land use and land cover (LULC) in addition to the observed patterns of forest fragmentation .
Building on previous observations about invasive species being more prevalent around the forest edge (in comparison to the forest core), the authors attempted to assess this theory in New England in the United States. Additionally, because urban centres are rapidly developing in this area, they wanted to determine the extent to which certain socio-economic (e.g. single family housing) and environmental (e.g. elevation) factors can be used to predict forest fragmentation change.
This research used a wide range of data and technological processes :
- three categories of data including landscape response data and species richness data (collected from NOAA and citizen science initiatives), and socioeconomic data (from the US Census)
- Methods of satellite data geoprocessing and LUCL classification (GIS), spatial analysis and statistical models
Hierarchical bayesian modelling was used to predict changes in forest fragmentation and land use class distribution by each socio-economic and environmental variable given the properties of the rest of the data, with the outputs (such as spatial random effects) displayed on ArcGIS. It was evident from the model that socio-economic factors (driven by population) do explain forest fragmentation patterns in the region. Additionally, invasive species richness data was mapped and statistically analysed to reveal that, as expected, woody invasive richness is significantly and positively associated with forest edge areas and significantly and negatively associated with forest core areas – thus, future fragmentation is likely to increase the probability of woody invasive species spread.
What worked well? The methodology was robust and highly replicable – the method can be used the model forest fragmentation patterns in other regions. The citizen science element allowed for easy data-collection and likely engaged many non-expert volunteers in local ecology. However, due to the scarcity of volunteers in northern New England, this method meant richness data was not evenly distributed.
For these reasons, we rated this paper 8.5/10.