My hypothesis predicts that non-native plants will be more prevalent near a linear disturbance. The results of this research may give some insight into the cumulative effects of anthropogenic disturbance, particularly regarding the creation of travel corridors. For example, if it is found that the non-native plants species being studied have high abundances for greater distances from the linear disturbance, this may indicate that there are larger cumulative impacts that persist far from the actual footprint of the disturbance. This sort of information could be useful for regulating bodies when making decisions on the permitting of development. Furthermore, this information may also be useful in informing the scale of offsetting measures required when development does occur, or showing the importance of implementing proper mitigation measures to avoid the establishment of non-native species along this fragmented habitat. It is well known that linear disturbances are a vector for the spread of non-native plant species, but quantifying the spatial scale that this occurs provides critical information necessary for calculating overall impacts of development. Furthermore, determining the abundances of specific species in relation to these disturbances is also important as different species of plants have distinctive spatial patterns (i.e., there is variation in how they establish and distribute after a disturbance). This is to say that certain species may invade an area at a greater spatial scale than others, and thus may cause more serious issues that need to be controlled for in the planning stages of development.
To be sure, the findings of my study are limited in predicting cumulative impacts due to the small spatial scale of the study; however, similar larger studies with parallel experimental designs would be useful in predicting the indirect impacts of development, and the spatial scale at which introduced species will occur and in what abundance.
Possible keywords could be:
- Non-native species
- Linear disturbance
- Edge effect
- Cumulative effects of development
- Anthropogenic development