Guiding large-scale management of invasive species using network metrics

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that network metrics can effectively guide large-scale invasive species management, achieving near-optimal results with less computational effort and data than traditional optimization methods.

Contribution

The paper introduces a network-based approach to invasive species management, showing its effectiveness and robustness compared to optimal strategies across a large landscape.

Findings

Network-guided management achieves median 100% of optimal performance.

Performance remains high (>80%) with less information and different metrics.

Method is stable across regions with varying lake counts.

Abstract

Complex socio-environmental interdependencies drive biological invasions, causing damages across large spatial scales. For widespread invasions, targeting of management activities based on optimization approaches may fail due to computational or data constraints. Here we evaluate an alternative approach that embraces complexity by representing the invasion as a network and using network structure to inform management locations. We compare optimal versus network-guided invasive species management at a landscape-scale, considering siting of boat decontamination stations targeting 1.6 million boater movements among 9,182 lakes in Minnesota, USA. Studying performance for 58 counties, we find that when full information is known on invasion status and boater movements, the best-performing network-guided metric achieves a median and lower quartile performance of 100% of optimal. We also find that performance remains relatively high using different network metrics or with less information (median above 80% and lower quartile above 60% of optimal for most metrics), but is more variable, particularly at the lower quartile. Additionally, performance is generally stable across counties with varying lake counts, suggesting viability for large-scale invasion management.