Thursday, July 18, 2013

Video - Cultivating Awareness: Ornamental Plants Invading Natural Areas

Midwest Invasive Plant Network  and Great Lakes Early Detection Network published a video "Cultivating Awareness: Ornamental Plants Invading Natural Areas" on Jul 15, 2013. Well done and very informative.

"Invasive plants are species that are non-native and cause or are likely to cause harm to the economy, the environment, or human health. Some popular ornamental plants are becoming invasive in natural areas. This video demonstrates the impacts of these species on natural areas in the Midwest and provides information on how to make good choices for landscaping." by Midwest Invasive Plant Network.

Although this video targets the invasive species problems in the Midwest, the issues are the same or very similar in other regions. A lot of information is packed into just under 14 minutes.

The smartphone app 'Landscape Alternatives' is now available for iPhone and iPad with the Android version available very soon.

In addition to the 'Landscape Alternatives' smartphone app, a smartphone has been created for collecting and reporting data on invasive species in the Midwest. Smartphone apps have been created to make it easy to collect and report data on invasive species for many regions across North America. The apps here send the data to EDDMapS, Early Detection and Distribution Mapping System. EDDMapS provides a picture of the distribution of invasive species across the U.S. and Canada. EDDMapS cooperates with and aggregates data from other invasive species mapping projects such as GLEDN (Great Lakes Early Detection Network) and Texasinvasives.org.