Invasive Species Early Detection

Interest in the Vermont Atlas of Life has been phenomenal. With all of your enthusiastic eyes and lenses out in the field recording plants, animals, fungi, and more, this is also a great opportunity to report observations of plants or animals that pose risks to Vermont’s natural communities. Early detection means finding, identifying, and reporting population of invasive plants or animals while they are still manageable.

To participate, visit the list of early detection species at http://www.vtecostudies.org/atlas/invasive.html. For help in identification, visit the Gallery of Invaders at Vermont Invasives. Some of these species are already in Vermont, some are knocking at the door, and others may show up unexpectedly. Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom has far fewer invasive plants than the rest of the state, so special attention there is very important. If you find early detection species outside of a cultivated area, try and get good, identifiable photographs, double-check the location data, and make some comments about the population size when you post it to the Vermont Atlas of Life. It helps to have some numeric indication of what you found, like “hundreds of beetles seen”, or “about 10 square feet covered in seedlings”. In the box next to "Add a field" type in Invasive (select yes, no, or maybe if you are unsure about the status).

You probably already know that there are many more invasive species in Vermont that those listed. This list is just an early detection list. Please enter any invasive species you find and check off the invasive field.

To spice this up, let’s have another contest. For the best photograph of an invasive species submitted to the Vermont Atlas of Life in 2013, correctly tagged using “Add a field”, we’ll have another crowd-sourced vote. The winner will get a sweet prize.

For more information about Vermont invasive plants and animals, or to learn more about how you can help control invasives, visit http://vtinvasives.org/. You can see all of the Vermont Atlas of Life Missions at http://www.vtecostudies.org/atlas/missions.html

Posted on 12 May, 2013 20:41 by kpmcfarland kpmcfarland

Comments

Is there a way to batch edit in fields? I have a million knotweed and garlic mustard sightings but I am too lazy to go in and add the field to all of them.. I should check on that.

Posted by charlie over 11 years ago

I don't think so. You can go to your observations, batch edit and filter for a species, but then it gives you all of them in a long list and you have to add it for each one.

Posted by kpmcfarland over 11 years ago

Actually the feature was there but buggy, Ken-Ichi said he is fixing it though.

Posted by charlie over 11 years ago

That's cool. Fill us in when it's working.

Posted by kylejones over 11 years ago

Batch editing observation fields is working now, right? It's working for me at least.

Posted by kueda over 11 years ago

Hi Ken-Ichi! Sorry about that, I forgot to test it, but I just did and it does work! Thank you!

Posted by charlie over 11 years ago

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