NSF Predicting Regional Invasion Dynamic Processes (Pride)
Description:
Invasion of exotic species poses a major threat to many ecosystems, resulting significant ecosystem degradation and economic loss. Research on the invasion of exotic species has been a major topic in the last two decades and much knowledge has been accumulated on invasion ecology from small plot research. However, current understanding of the long-term invasion process at regional to continental scale is limited, partially due to the lack of long-term, large-scale empirical data. This project uses a new functional-trait (e.g., life history) based research framework that incorporates all three major invasion components (i.e., the invader, the recipient system, and drivers that facilitate the invader) with the consideration of temporal progression and spatial dependency. The overarching goal of this Category 1 project is to establish a regional network of scientists and practitioners for the development of a regional scale predictive invasion dynamic model under the new functional-trait based framework. The specific aims for this project are: (1) to develop an interdisciplinary team to construct regional to continental-scale invasive modeling framework to ensure its relevancy to invasion management, (2) to develop a comprehensive regional database including invader functional traits, current distributions, recipient system characteristics, and multi-dimensional invasion driver characteristics, and (3) to develop a new, multi-scale invasive modeling framework based on functional traits for invader, invasion driver, and recipient systems and explore their cross-scale interactions.
