A team of scientists from the USGS Fort Collins Science Center are being recognized with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Cooperative Conservation Award on May 7 in Washington, DC. This award recognizes cooperative conservation achievements that involve collaborative activity among a diverse range of entities. Taking a page from the Pentagon, USGS scientists Tom Stohlgren, Catherine Jarnevich, and Tracy Holcombe created a “war room” to help battle harmful invasive species in the United States. Their Advanced Invasive Species Modeling Room leverages research conducted by the USGS and the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University with funding from the USGS, NASA, National Science Foundation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and others to better document, map, and predict the spread of harmful plants, animals, and diseases in the United States. Since its inception, partnerships have rapidly developed among individual landowners, citizen groups, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and other Federal, State, local, and tribal governments to battle invasive species. The computer equipment includes a large touch-screen monitor, server, and computer loaded with the new, open-source, spatial analysis programs. Partners bring their field data on invasive species locations and specific management objectives, and FORT scientists work with them to customize models, transfer the technologies, and show how the predictive spatial models are best used for early detection and rapid response to harmful invaders.
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
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