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Ecologically-based Management
Ecologically-based invasive plant management incorporates our understanding of ecosystem processes and patterns with appropriate tools to develop sustainable management programs. It requires:
- Understanding and manipulating the mechanisms and processes that affect plant communities
- Understanding and manipulating the biology and ecology of the invasive plant and the desired habitat
- Understanding that ecosystems have feedbacks and that manipulations will have foreseen and unforeseen consequences
- Understanding that management tools have limitations and are not benign
- Using performance indicators to measure management success
- Adapting management strategies as management success is assessed.
- Ecologically-based invasive plant management recognizes that ecosystems are always changing.
- Ecologically-based invasive plant management also uses weed management technologies to manipulate the biology/ecology of both the invasive plants and the desirable species to create a desired state.
- The best ecologically-based management strategy is prevention.
These principles are consistent with the adaptive management approach because they build on learning, are a participatory approach to research and land management, recognize that effective management is based on sound science, assume a variety of pathways can meet a given objective, and recognize that partnerships are essential to achieving sustainable ecosystems.
Publications
See Further Reading for books on ecology and related topics.
For more on ecological theory, see the list of academic references below.
Annotated Bibliographies on the Ecology and Management of Invasive Species. Useful list from GOERT, Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team in British Columbia.
Ecological Principles for Managing Land Use (579 KB pdf file) published by the Ecological Society of America’s Committee on Land Use. Identifies ecological principles critical to sustaining ecosystems in the face of land use
change; offers guidelines for using these principles in decision-making. This document is one of the modules in the EPA Watershed Academy Web, Online Training in Watershed Management.
Healthy Plant Communities — MontGuide fact sheet 199909/Ag, MSU Extension, July 1999. Designed to help landowners make economically and ecologically sound weed management decisions. Explains how plant communities develop, how weeds invade and how you can work toward developing a desired plant community that is relatively weed-resistant.
Invasive Plant Ecology and Management, online resources from the Leopold Institute's Linking Wilderness Research and Management Series. Includes links to species lists, distribution records, control techniques, approaches to management, access to programs, and other resources.
Chapters 2 and 3 of CIPM's Online Invasive Plant Management Textbook describe some of the principles of ecological management.
"Ecological Management of Invasive Plants—Four Key Premises," from Knowledge networks: an avenue to ecological management of invasive weeds. Jordon, N., R. Becker, J. Gunsolus, S. White, and S. Damme, Weed Science 51(2): 271–277 (from BioOne journals online). (Excerpts below)
- A truly ecological approach to invasive management should aim at amelioration of weed communities.
- Invasive-plant management should be approached by taking the managed ecosystem itself—farm, ranch, forest, lake, etc.—to be the instrument of weed management.
- We must recognize the primary and crucial role of land managers: farmers, ranchers, foresters, etc., in invasive management by such ecosystem tuning.
- Innovation by land managers is not sufficient. Ecological management of invasives will require support from new or improved practices in a multiplicity of relevant sectors, e.g., extension workers, farm advisors, input suppliers, researchers of many sorts, equipment makers, and plant breeders . . . . Therefore, we call for a broad sweep of innovation to enable ecological management of invasive plants. Knowledge networks, as described above, appear to be an invaluable means to this end.
Primer of Ecological Restoration, from Society for Ecological Restoration, describes restoration planning, attributes of restored ecosystems and more.
References
Booth, B. D., S. D. Murphy, and C. J. Swanton. 2003. Weed ecology in natural and agricultural systems. CABI Publishing, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK. Explains ecological principles essential to understanding how weeds function in the environment. Emphasizes why weed management strategies within an integrated weed management approach should be based on ecological knowledge. Requires only an understanding of basic biology. Covers population ecology, community ecology, the importance of weed ecology to weed management.
Luken, J. O., and J. W. Thieret. 1997. Assessment and management of plant invasions. Springer-Verlag, New York. Attempts to cast the issue of nonindigenous plant invasion in a broader ecological context that includes humans acting as managers of natural resources, designers of regulations, and disperses of organisms. Addressses important ecological interactions that emerge prior to plant invasion, as well as post-management interactions.
McPherson, G. R., and S. DeStefano. 2003. Applied ecology and natural resource management. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Practical guidelines for integrating applied ecology with natural resource management; describes how concepts and approaches used by ecologists to study communities and ecosystems can be applied to management.
Radosevich, S., J. Holt, and C. Ghersa. 1997. Weed ecology: Implications for management, 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York. By considering weeds foremost as plants and by relying on the concepts of plant ecology, the authors hope to provide a better understanding of weeds that will lead to better crop and weed management.
Sheley, R. L., T. J. Svejcar, and B. D. Maxwell. 1996. A theoretical framework for developing successional weed management strategies on rangeland. Weed Technology 10: 766-773. Provides the mechanistic framework necessary for developing successional weed management systems that shift plant communities to a desired state.
