Project Introduction

About the project

The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis was founded in 1995 with a mission to promote the sharing and use of ecological data to solve environmental problems.  The center promotes science in a number ways – through scientific working groups in which scientists from around the world meet to work on specific problems, through resident scientists, most of whom are fresh out of PhD programs, and through distinguished visiting scientists who come to the center for varying lengths of time.

One very successful NCEAS program has been the “Distributed Graduate Seminar” (DGS) series.  In a DGS, a large research project is broken up into pieces and distributed to small graduate courses all over the country.  These graduate courses work only on this specific project and then contribute their piece to the overall analysis.  Past distributed graduate seminars have examined issues like the scientific basis for endangered species recovery plans, the role of marine reserves in conserving coastal ecosystems, and the economic impacts of forest pests amd pathogens.  Many of these projects have led to important scientific findings and had an impact on conservation policy.    

The goal of this project is to do something similar at the undergraduate level.  We chose this specific project (invasive plants in National Wildlife Refuges) because most undergraduate ecology and conservation biology classes cover invasive species and because a dataset was available and ready to be analyzed.  The dataset is also of a manageable size – because this is the first project like this that we’ve done with undergraduates, we didn’t want 40 or 50 different classes involved.  We have enrolled 8 classes in the project, and each class has about 50 refuges to compile and analyze. 

Your class was chosen because of your instructor’s interest in the project and because of her expertise with these issues.  We hope you’ll enjoy working on this, and we hope you’ll learn something from the experience.  We also hope to get some real science done.

Scientific Objectives

Nature reserves play a large role in protecting rare species.  Indeed, much of conservation policy is predicated on the idea that well-chosen reserves can protect species that cannot survive in human-dominated areas.  Unfortunately, simply declaring an area off-limits to development may not be enough.  Protected areas can still be affected by regional and global environmental stresses like air pollution and climate warming.  In addition, invasive species – weeds, forest pests, and feral predators like cats and rats – don’t respect reserve boundaries.  Invasive species may establish within reserves and displace or consume the native species that the reserves were designed to protect.  For example, brown tree snakes (introduced from South Pacific) have virtually eliminated all songbirds on Guam, resulting in at least seven complete extinctions of wild bird species.  In the continental U.S., Purple Loosestrife is a major threat to wetland habitats - it basically just fills them in and prevents other plants and animals from living there.  Because they can push out native species and eliminate habitats, invasive species are often a major focus of management within national parks, wildlife refuges, and other types of nature reserves.

Given the recognized importance of invasive species for species conservation, you might be surprised how few good datasets there are for invasive species in nature reserves.  Most reserves don’t have a lot of staff, and many Wildlife Refuges were established with a single species in mind (say, elk or condors).  In many cases these target species are closely monitored, but no one necessarily thinks about weeds or insect pests until they are well-established.  Look in Google Scholar for a published analysis of invasive plants in U.S. National Parks – you won’t find one.  People are working on compiling this, but the data are scattered and surprisingly incomplete.

Our project centers on an analysis of invasive plant species in U.S. National Wildlife Refuges.  There are two main goals for the project.  The first is to improve the quality of the invasive plant database for U.W. National Wildlife Refuges.  We can almost certainly accomplish this goal.  The current dataset is based on a 2002 web-survey that was distributed to managers at all Wildlife Refuges.  These data have big holes in them, and by following up with refuge personnel and using online databases, we should be able to fill some of these holes.

The second goal of our study is to get a better understanding of the factors that determine whether or not Wildlife Refuges have a lot of invasive species.  For example, some refuges claim that only one or two invasive plants are problematic, others list upwards of 30 problem species.  Why are some reserves more affected than others?  Does it depend on the size of the different refuges, the number of different habitats found there, the diversity of native plant species?  We will use our updated database to try to answer these questions for National Wildlife Refuges.

Project structure

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service administers National Wildlife Refuges and divides them into seven regions.  These regions are Alaska, Pacific, Southwest, Mountain-Prairie, Midwest//Great Lakes, Southeast and Northeast.  We’ve essentially adopted this classification, except that we’ve collapsed Alaska into the Pacific region (Alaska only has a handful of refuges and probably not too many invasive plants.  Each region’s refuges will be analyzed by one class, except for the Southeast and the Pacific, which are the largest regions and have been split among two classes.  So, each class will put together the data for their own region on their own schedule.  A basic analysis will be done by each group to determine what factors explain the extent of plant invasions in their region.  When the data are compiled for all the classes, we’ll perform an analysis for all the refuges in the country for which we have data.

Research Overview

Following are the basic tasks you will need to carry out with your list of Wildlife Refuges.  These are explained in detail at the Research Protocols section of the website.  This section will give you the overview so you can see where things are going. 

1) Do any background reading assigned by your instructor.  The material on the website assumes a basic familiarity with the ecology of invasive species, species interactions, and community ecology concepts like biodiversity, species coexistence, and the niche.

2) Read the materials on the website, including the project introduction and the research protocols. Click through all the links so you’ll know what’s here and where to find what you need. 

3) Read through the data for each of your assigned refuges.  Pay attention to whether invasive plant lists are attached, whether overall plant lists appear to exist, and whether landscover/habitat data is included.

4) E-mail the contact person for your refuge to get any updated data on native/invasive species.  Read the attached e-mail templates and carefully choose the correct template (i.e. make sure you ask for precisely the right information).  Refuge personal are typically very busy (no they don’t just hang out and watch wildlife all day), so you’ll likely only get one shot at this.

5) Do the training exercises – this will typically be done as part of your class.  These will help make sure you know what you’re doing before you start on the real data.

6) Go through the refuge data and pull out the necessary information.  Enter it into your class spreadsheet.  This includes the calculations of weights for each data set and Simpson’s index of evenness.

7) Go to the Biota of North America website and look for a complete exotic plant list for the refuge.  Also get a list for the county (or counties) that the refuge is in – this is your invasive species pool. 

8) Review your data with your instructor and with the author students who have compiled data for that same refuge.  Resolve discrepancies among entries.  If these cannot be resolved, average the relevant entries to finalize the data for each refuge.

9) With your class, carry out the analysis of the factors that influence invasive richness in refuges in your region.

10) Make sure you class data is in the correct format and then contribute your class data to the full project analysis.

CAVEATS, WARNINGS, DISCLAIMERS

1) This is real research.  This is not a canned exercise for trying to teach you something. We don’t know what we’ll find out, we don’t even know if we’ll find out anything at all.  That’s research, that’s the way it goes. 

2) Problems will almost certainly come up as we get into the data compilation end of the project.  We’ve tried to anticipate as many of these as possible, but there are always things that one doesn’t find out until one starts.  Be ready to be flexible - this is also part of doing research. 

3) If you don’t know, or if you’re not sure, just ask.  We know you don’t have much experience with invasive plants or with species lists.  If you’re wondering about something it probably means we didn’t explain things very well.  Ask your instructor or ask me (marsh@nceas.ucsb.edu), but do ask.  I’ll always answer your e-mails promptly.  If it’s complicated and you’d rather call, that’s fine too.  My number is (805) 892-2527.

4) Don’t enter data unless you have real confidence in those data.   Don’t guess.  In any scientific research, it’s always better to have missing data than data that are wrong. 

5) Don’t assume that all the data you find are necessarily correct - all the data you'll find were entered by humans and humans are notoriously error-prone.  Are there really 80,000 plant species in the refuge?  Is the refuge really only 0.2 ha?  Keep your brain on while you’re entering data – don’t just automatically write down whatever you see. See point 4 above.

6) Take notes about questions or issues that come up while you’re doing the data compilation. It's really hard to remember questions from one refuge to the next.  It never hurts to write things down, either on paper or in the “notes” section of your spreadsheet.

7) Materials on this website probably contain typos or other mistakes.  Furthermore, what you read may contradict something your instructor has told you.  If the contradiction is theoretical or conceptual (e.g. what is an “invasive species”, why are some areas more invaded than others), go with what your instructor told you.  If the contradiction concerns research protocols (e.g. what data to collect, how to calculate something) be sure to ask about it so we can clear it up.

8) Don’t be afraid to voice concerns, objections, skepticism.  We’ve tried to think through the limitations of the project and how we’ll deal with them.  But you may think of some issues that we haven’t considered.  If you do think of some additional problems, we want to know. Being skeptical of one’s own results is an important part of science.

9) If you have some ideas for additional analyses you’d like for us to do, additional questions you think we should be asking, please let us know.  This project is not set in stone – you may have good ideas that can be incorporated into the project. 

10) Take the time you need to do things well.  You are contributing to an important research project and your contribution matters.  Good luck!