Weed Dynamics and Invasion Processes
Introduced weeds (Alien plants) cost the productive sectors of New Zealand more than $100 million every year and the ecological complexity and costs will escalate as climate change facilitates further invasion and spread.
Our research integrates field experiments, regional surveys, analyses of existing databases, and simulation modelling to bring a comprehensive perspective to weed problems. This significantly advances our understanding of weed invasions and helps us deliver novel risk assessment tools that will quantify the threat posed by new and existing weeds under New Zealand's future climate scenarios.
This programme has five major project areas:
Determinants of weed naturalisation success
Optimising early warning, surveillance and monitoring
Developing prevention strategies
Developing weed risk assessment tools
Weed spatial dynamics, dispersal and spread
Future research directions:
While current research will continue along many of our major project areas, future work will increasingly examine the implications and impacts of climate change on the likelihood of new weeds becoming established in New Zealand, and the consequences for existing weed problems.
