Leafy Spurge (Euphorbia esula) is an invasive species native to Europe and Asia. It out-competes native plants for water and nutrients resulting in reduced diversity of wildlife and plants as well as creating huge economic damage.  Management of Leafy Spurge is both costly and time-consuming so early detection is preferred. The goal of our project is to predict the spread of Leafy Spurge in British Columbia based on collected sites of the plant. We hope our project will aid in the early detection and prevention of this invasive species.

We performed a multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) based on 7 parameters: known plant sites, main roads, rivers, land use, soil drainage, elevation, and aspect. Each parameter was normalized and assigned a weight based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The result showed a wider spread of leafy spurge in the northern part of BC and a more concentrated spread in the lower half. Two sensitivity analyses were conducted to test the sensitivity of parameter weights and the proximity to known plant sites.

Through our MCE, it was found that spread of Leafy Spurge occurred along rivers and roads which is supported by our research. For further studies we would like to look at the effect of density of known plant sites on the spread.