Abstract
The United States National Park Service was created to protect and make accessible to the public the nation’s most precious natural resources and cultural features for present and future generations. However, this heritage is threatened by the invasion of non-native plants, animals, and pathogens. To evaluate the scope of invasions, the USNPS has inventoried non-native plant species in the 216 parks that have significant natural resources, documenting the identity of non-native species. We investigated relationships among non-native plant species richness, the number of threatened and endangered plant species, native species richness, latitude, elevation, park area and park corridors and vectors. Parks with many threatened and endangered plants and high native plant species richness also had high non-native plant species richness. Non-native plant species richness was correlated with number of visitors and kilometers of backcountry trails and rivers. In addition, this work reveals patterns that can be further explored empirically to understand the underlying mechanisms.
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Abbreviations
- USNPS:
-
United States National Park Service
- US:
-
United States
- NR-MAP:
-
Natural Resource Management Assessment Program
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Acknowledgments
This study was initiated and funded by the US National Park Service. Thanks to Linda Drees, Tim Goddard, Judy Daniels and Danelle Malget for their contributions to the project. A special thanks to Greg Newman and Dave Barnett for their help acquiring and processing these data. Two anonymous reviewers improved the manuscript.
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Allen, J.A., Brown, C.S. & Stohlgren, T.J. Non-native plant invasions of United States National Parks. Biol Invasions 11, 2195–2207 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-008-9376-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-008-9376-1