IRCEB: Ecological Forecasting and Risk Analysis of Nonindigenous Species

University Of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN

Investigators

Abstract

Intellectual merit. Numbers of nonindigenous species--species introduced from elsewhere - are increasing rapidly worldwide. They are a major cause of biodiversity loss and environmental change, and are estimated to cost the US $137 billion/yr. The 2001 National Invasive Species Management Plan (www.invasivespecies.gov) highlighted the urgent need for more rigorous and comprehensive risk analysis frameworks for nonindigenous species so that prevention and control strategies can be targeted appropriately. The central public policy consideration is how much of society's resources should be expended in response to nonindigenous species, and how, for example, should it be allocated between prevention and control? These considerations, though, include a nexus of interacting ecological and economic factors that require interdisciplinary effort. Species invasions are caused by economic activities, and in turn affect economic activities. This ecological and economic linkage and feedback means that the assessment of risk interacts with the management of risk, which contradicts the common notion that risk assessment and risk management are independent. Social welfare and risk assessment are both determined jointly by ecological and economic processes. In response to the need for interdisciplinary risk analysis, this project brings together experts from invasion biology, mathematical modeling, and economics. The main goal is to develop and apply a bio-economic modeling framework for nonindigenous species that integrates risk assessment and risk management, includes uncertainty distributions, and optimizes prevention and control strategies in a landscape context. The overall bio-economic model uses Stochastic Dynamic Programming, which allows the investigators to incorporate ecological-economic feedbacks in such a way to optimize combinations of prevention and control strategies to maximize social welfare. This framework will be extended to the landscape scale with Neural Network models. The applications will focus on freshwater nonindigenous species in the Great Lakes region. A preliminary application to zebra mussels suggested, for example, that society should be spending about $240,000/yr to keep zebra mussels from invading each lake with a power plant (to prevent fouling of pipes). This is in sharp contrast to the $825,000 that the Fish & Wildlife Service spent in FY2001 for prevention and control efforts for all aquatic nuisance species for all lakes. Our analyses will be directly relevant to policymakers and natural resource managers. Broader impacts. The investigators will partner with the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago to educate schoolchildren and the public about the general problem of nonindigenous species, about what individuals can do to reduce the problem, and about the role that science plays in public policy decisions. By partnering with an educational software firm, they will convert research models into user-friendly formats for use by schoolchildren, the public, policymakers, resource managers, and stakeholders. In partnership with the Great Lakes Commission, research methods, results, and user-friendly products will be disseminated in workshops to policymakers, managers, and stakeholders. Finally, they will develop international collaborations and a reciprocal exchange of information and techniques with top researchers in Australia, where NIS research is advanced relative to North America.