# Transient Propagation of the Invasion Front in the Homogeneous Landscape and in the Presence of a Road

## TL;DR

This paper studies how invasive plants spread initially in a uniform environment and how the presence of a road affects their spread speed.

## Contribution

The study introduces a new framework to analyze transient invasion dynamics in homogeneous and heterogeneous landscapes.

## Key findings

- Invasion speed in the transient regime depends on detection threshold population density.
- The presence of a road in the landscape slows down the transient invasion dynamics.
- Nonlinear spatio-temporal dynamics emerge during the early stages of invasion.

## Abstract

Understanding the propagation of invasive plants at the beginning of invasive spread is important as it can help practitioners eradicate harmful species more efficiently. In our work the propagation regime of the invasive plant species is studied at the short-time scale before a travelling wave is established and advances into space at a constant speed. The integro-difference framework has been employed to deal with a stage-structured population, and a short-distance dispersal mode has been considered in the homogeneous environment and when a road presents in the landscape. It is explained in the paper how nonlinear spatio-temporal dynamics arise in a transient regime where the propagation speed depends on the detection threshold population density. Furthermore, we investigate the question of whether the transient dynamics become different when the homogeneous landscape is transformed into the heterogeneous one. It is shown in the paper how invasion slows down in a transient regime in the presence of a road.