Climate change is causing an accelerated spread of invasive species that spread outside of their normal range and cause harm with economic impacts. Policy makers look to specialists such as entomologists, biologists and plant pathologists to understand the drivers that are causing these invasive threats, and to plan policy in order to mitigate the effects.
Maps are the central means to communicate pest risk, but the methods that are used don’t normalize the degree of uncertainty that are inherent in these predictions. In order to better depict and standardize the approach, researchers from various fields have come together to help prioritize and define areas of improvement in the way they do pest-risk mapping. The recommendations of this group have been published in the May issue of BioScience (subscription), and are summarized in this release from researchers at North Carolina State University.
