Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Harnessing Citizen Science And Collections Data For Invasive Plant Surveillance, Adin L. Ring
Harnessing Citizen Science And Collections Data For Invasive Plant Surveillance, Adin L. Ring
Library Map Prize
Our main source of information about the distribution of invasive plants in the United States comes from occurrence records in three categories: biological collections (physical plant specimens in museums), citizen science (opportunistic observations by untrained civilians), and invasion monitoring (structured observation by government or non-profit agencies). This study compiles a set of 3.1 million occurrence records of 3,578 introduced plant species in the continental United States, and infers spatial, temporal, and taxonomic biases by comparing the three categories of data. We find that citizen science contributes the largest bulk of records, and does better capturing visually conspicuous plants and very …