By Pat Guertin
A new Public Works Technical Bulletin (PWTB), 'General Mapping Guidelines for Terrestrial Invasive Plant Species,' provides an overview of strategies for mapping and monitoring invasive plant species on Army installations.
Military training and testing create unique challenges for sustainable land management. These activities often create disturbances that affect the functioning and sustainability of the training landscape. Vehicle traffic, munitions impacts and similar occurrences that disturb soils and plant life can facilitate the establishment and spread of invasive plant species.
These plants are of concern to the military land manager as they can adversely impact soil stability, water quality, Soldier safety and threatened and endangered species habitat. To effectively manage the occurrence and spread of invasive plants, land managers need a practical system to survey and map the distribution of invasive species populations.
This PWTB discusses mapping and monitoring methodologies that provide military land managers with comprehensive, objective data on plant distribution and spread to establish priorities and measure outcomes of a weed management program. Topics covered include survey methods, data collection/quantitative methods, information on remote sensing and useful information links to applicable federal, state, and academic agencies.
PWTB 200-1-54 can be downloaded from http://www.wbdg.org/ccb/ARMYCOE/PWTB/pwtb_200_1_54.pdf
POC is Pat Guertin, 217-373-5857, Patrick.J.Guertin@usace.army.mil
