New York Invasive Species Research Institute
The Planning Model
Making decisions on invasive species management presents extensive challenges; budget constraints, uncertainty in treatment effectiveness, and the sheer number of invasive species are only a few of the complexities that land managers have to consider. New York’s PRISM leaders voiced a need for a tool that can assist in making these management decisions– particularly a tool that focuses on the unique management objectives of the area and accounts for uncertainty, all within a budget.
With funding from NYSDEC, NYISRI partnered with Cornell researchers, PRISM and agency staff, the NY Natural Heritage Program, and NatureServe (developers of iMapInvasives) to create the NY Invasive Species Planning Model. You can view a walk-through of how to use the tool and watch a recorded tutorial session through the links on this page.
Request Access
Email imapinvasives@dec.ny.gov with subject line “Planning Model Access”, then sign in to your iMapInvasives account
Purpose of the Planning Model
Input from managers, PRISM leaders, and invasive species experts was essential to the creation and development of this tool. Stakeholder participation throughout the project was necessary to build model recommendations from the tool’s foundation, and input throughout the process shaped iterations to what it is today. Their essential input helped the team to answer this key decision question:
How can managers allocate resources across invasive species, areas, and actions to reduce environmental, human health and safety, economic, and social impacts of invasive species at the highest treatment effectiveness?
Instead of reiterating existing tools that list priority areas for management, the goal of this tool was to provide decision recommendations given real-world constraints. Stakeholders expressed the need to consider areas with multiple invasive species and the most effective management strategy for each species. The tool would also need to account for differing management objectives, as the objectives for one region or land cover type might not be the same as another. Additionally, it would need to address budget constraints and balance the tradeoffs that arise. This decision-making tool navigates all of these factors to arrive at applicable conclusions.
Features of the Planning Model
With this tool you can generate a report of management recommendations produced for a given PRISM, list of species, and defined budget. The tool allows you to subset the results by species or area.
- You can view recommendations…
- Within any 5x5km area of land (PRISM block),
- Within existing map layers (for example, within an entire PRISM region, watershed, or protected area), or
- Within a user-drawn polygon.
- You can save or print these reports for later reference.
Thank you to our partners:
