Team Wins IDS NRA (TJS)
November 1, 2003 - The NASA/USGS invasive species team has been selected for funding to develop new capabilities for mapping biodiversity and invasive species hotspots on a continental scale. The proposal, lead by Tom Stohlgren, was submitted in response to the NASA Research Announcement (NRA) NRA-03-OES-03, entitled "Interdisciplinary Science in the NASA Earth Science Enterprise."
Our understanding of biological diversity is undermined by ignorance, habitat loss, invasive species, harvesting, and disturbances. A fundamental problem is our inability to accurately measure the rate at which biodiversity is being lost because we lack effective techniques to rapidly assess - or "fingerprint" - biodiversity at large spatial scales. This work will refine forecasting capabilities for biodiversity and invasive species by expanding our ability to fingerprint biologically significant hotspots on local, regional, and national scales.
The integrated science advances we hope to make will directly address the difficult problem of spatiotemporal modeling of biodiversity patterns at multiple scales of ecosystem resolution. We will greatly expand ecological forecasting capabilities from landscape scales to regional and subcontinent scales, and from a few non-native plant species to native and non-native plants, animals, diseases, and rare/important biodiversity habitats.
Fingerprinting Native and Non-native Biodiversity in the United States Phase I:
The Western US
Thomas J. Stohlgren
National Institute of Invasive
Species Science
USGS Fort Collins Science Center
John L. Schnase
Jeffrey T. Morisette
Jeffrey A. Pedelty
NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center
