Guiding large-scale management of invasive species using network metrics

Jaime Ashander (), Kailin Kroetz, Rebecca Epanchin-Niell, Nicholas B. D. Phelps, Robert G. Haight and Laura E. Dee
Additional contact information
Jaime Ashander: Resources for the Future
Kailin Kroetz: Resources for the Future
Nicholas B. D. Phelps: College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences, University of Minnesota
Robert G. Haight: USDA Forest Service
Laura E. Dee: University of Colorado

Nature Sustainability, 2022, vol. 5, issue 9, 762-769

Abstract: Abstract Complex socio-environmental interdependencies drive biological invasions, causing damages across large spatial scales. For widespread invasions, targeting of management activities based on optimization approaches may fail due to computational or data constraints. Here, we evaluate an alternative approach that embraces complexity by representing the invasion as a network and using network structure to inform management locations. We compare optimal versus network-guided invasive species management at a landscape-scale, considering siting of boat decontamination stations targeting 1.6 million boater movements among 9,182 lakes in Minnesota, United States. Studying performance for 58 counties, we find that when full information is known on invasion status and boater movements, the best-performing network-guided metric achieves a median and lower-quartile performance of 100% of optimal. We also find that performance remains relatively high using different network metrics or with less information (median >80% and lower quartile >60% of optimal for most metrics) but is more variable, particularly at the lower quartile. Additionally, performance is generally stable across counties with varying lake counts, suggesting viability for large-scale invasion management. Our results suggest that network approaches hold promise to support sustainable resource management in contexts where modelling capacity and/or data availability are limited.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00913-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:5:y:2022:i:9:d:10.1038_s41893-022-00913-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-022-00913-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().