Special Seminar - Wednesday June 29, 4pm

Progress towards understanding landscape-level impacts of aquatic invasive species

Jake Vander Zanden

Professor, Center for Limnology

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Invasive species are a major component of global environmental change. Aquatic systems are especially vulnerable to invasive species impacts. Much of our current understanding of aquatic invasive species impact is at the local or site level. In contrast, invasive species impacts are playing out across vast spatial scales on heterogeneous landscapes, and invasive species prevention and management efforts demands consideration of landscape-level impact. How can we ‘scale up’ an understanding of site-level impacts to the broader landscape scale? This talk will synthesize how aquatic invasive species distribution, site occupancy, abundance, and local impact ultimately determine landscape-level impact. Scaling up our understanding of invasive species impacts to the landscape level and recognizing spatial heterogeneity will help inform invasive species risk assessment, management, and prevention. While there remain many gaps in our understanding, current evidence suggests that the spatial distribution of aquatic invasive species impacts is right-skewed.

Venue: Benham Seminar Room, 2nd Floor Benham Building, Department of Zoology, University of Otago

ENDS

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