Spatial Risk Assessment of Alien Plants in China Using Biodiversity Resistance Theory

Abstract

In the present chapter, the potential occurrence risk of invasive plants across different provinces of China is studied using disease risk mapping techniques (empirical Bayes smoothing and Poisson-Gamma model). The biodiversity resistance theory which predicts that high-biodiversity areas will have reduced risk of species invasion serves as the base for performing spatial risk assessment of plant invasion across provinces. The results show that, both risk mapping methods identified that north-eastern part of China have the highest relative risk of plant invasion. In contrast, south-western and southeastern parts of China, which have high woody plant richness, are predicted to possess low relative risks of plant invasion. For the future, it is interesting to compare the spatial risk patterns across different functional groups of these alien plants. The results of this chapter has been published in an open-access journal [1].

Keywords: Alien plants versus native plants, dynamics of invasiveness, ecological assemblages, habitat heterogeneity, invasion biology, invasive plants, plant distribution, risk assessment, spatial ecology, spatial regression analysis, spatial statistics, species distribution and diversity patterns, water availability.