Thomas Crist Miami University Oxford, OH 45056 cristto@muohio.edu
Robert Parmenter Valles Caldera National Preserve Jemez Springs, NM 87025 bparmenter@vallescaldera.gov
Todd A. Crowl Utah State University Logan, UT 84322 facrowl@cc.usu.edu
Invasive species and infectious diseases affect biodiversity, ecosystem functions and services, and human health. Climate change, land use, and transport vectors interact in complex ways to determine the spread of native and non-native invasive species, pathogens, and their impacts on ecosystem dynamics. NEON is uniquely suited to monitor and forecast the spread of these organisms from local to continental scales, and to quantify their long-term effects on ecosystem structure, function, and services. The domain-level toolboxes of core wildland sites and deployable sites will enable monitoring and forecasting of regionally important invasive species that are shared among adjacent domains, as well as those with continental-scale distributions. Early detection of invasive species and infectious diseases will require sharing rapid-deployment units among the domain and continental toolboxes, since it will be important to identify hot spots of invasion or the emergence of infectious disease. Partnerships with several state and federal agencies that monitor the spread and impacts of invasive species and pathogens will be critical to developing a national data network that can be implemented within the NEON cyberinfrastructure. Remotely sensed hyperspectral data on invasive species and the environmental conditions obtained from the NEON Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) along with land-cover, human population, and transportation data from the Land-Use Package (LUP) will provide regional and continental-scale data that can be used with existing and emerging models to forecast the rates and patterns of spread and the potential geographic ranges of invasive species. Citizen science can also play a role in reporting new invasions, recording phenological changes associated with invasion or disease outbreak, and participate in efforts such as the Breeding Bird Survey that may reveal long-term biotic change following species invasions and disease spread. Educational outreach is important to promoting public understanding of how invasive species affect ecosystem services and human health, and how recreational, horticultural, and commerce activities facilitate their spread. The ecological and societal impacts of invasive species and infectious disease differ across gradients of climate and land use, and global climate change may exacerbate the spread and impacts of invasive species. Understanding the interactions of invasive species and infectious disease with other drivers of ecosystem change will be critical to NEON research and education, ecosystems services, and human health.