COURSE OUTLINE

This course covers Invasion Biology a the the most holistic level, and examines the problems, as well as provide mechanisms of analysis that potentially identify risks that an introduced species pose plus the ability to predict which environments it wil be mostinvasive.

Objectives

• Examine the economic implications in terms of direct impact on Gross National Productivity.

• Examine how Invasion Species threaten Biodiversity.

• Examine how Invasies Species impact many industries such as agriculture and aquaculture/mariculture and threatens food security.
• Examine how Invasion Biology is an International Issue and requires integrated and unified actions, that are political as well as managerial.
  

Outcomes

• Use of an Expert System to determine the risk association with an introduction of a new species into a host environment.
• Using of species prediction methods to identify how much environment is at risk from invasion.
• Analysis of the Global Invasive Alien Species (GISP) Information Portal

Resources Required


Access to a GIS, either IDRISI or ArcView.


Mark allocation

• Paper Review (Narrated Power Point) 20%
• Expert System 30%
• GARP Species Prediction 30%
• Analysis of the GISP Information Portal providing the basis for substantial contribution(s) to the Weblog or Formal Testing (exams) 20%

Resources

Assignment 1 - The Ruderic for assessment of this is here. Individual Abstracts for each Paper will be put up on the Blog and you will book by adding a comment.

Assignment 2 - This assignment is based on the research paper by Tucker and Richardson which can be found here. The full instructions can be found here. Click here to access an Expert system used to screen Invasive Species of the Cape Region here

Here is the direct link to the excel sheet from which you must select your species and to give you pointers to the right answers which you need to find data sources and reference them.

http://planet.botany.uwc.ac.za/nisl/invasives/Assignments/Expert_system/expert.xls

Assignment 3 - Presentation of Invasive Species (their distributions) is presented here. A description of the technique for using GARP is presented here.

I hope you enjoy this course.

Cheers

Rich