Addressing Invasives: Learning from Student Research and Map Analysis
In May of each year, high school seniors in Kennebunk, Maine fan out across the town to complete their senior project. Students have chosen a local community organization to volunteer with over a two-week period, completing a meaningful project they are passionate about, and that benefits the organization they choose to volunteer for. This school-sponsored program contributes hundreds of hours of volunteer work to our local community and engages students beyond the school’s walls by contributing valuable work and projects to our town.
Kennebunk Land Trust (KLT) is a small conservation nonprofit whose mission is to permanently preserve and protect significant natural spaces in the Kennebunk region. Two of the more prominent ways we strive toward that mission are by protecting open space and building nature trails. KLT has been fortunate to have local students choose and subscribe to that mission for their volunteer work. Students have built trails, created story book walks, researched climate change, and provided historical information about the preserves, among other worthwhile projects that contribute to KLT’s mission.
In 2024, two students interested in botany, specifically invasive plants, requested a special volunteer project researching invasive plants on KLT properties. The students’ passion for plants inspired them to proactively connect with KLT to develop a project that was uniquely helpful to KLT’s goals to expand our invasive plant management program. KLT had been considering mapping locations of invasive plants on their properties for some time in order to learn about the extent of invasive impact in order to plan for mitigation. With the student’s knowledge, willingness to help, and eagerness about the subject, these two students took on a project long on KLT’s wish list to complete.
The students walked over 30 miles of KLT trails and logged coordinates at locations where invasive plants were present, noting type of plant and severity of proliferation. The severity of invasive plant proliferation was ranked by the student’s on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 indicating the least severe and 5 the most severe. While subjective, this scale provided a relative comparison of the varying levels of invasive plant proliferation. The student’s surveyed what they could see from the trails in order to follow ‘Leave No Trace” principles in staying on established trails, and as a matter of efficiency (KLT owns over 1,500 acres!). The resulting information isn’t comprehensive, but it is an important foundation to understanding the spread of invasive plants on our preserves and having this information was the first step KLT needed to begin developing an invasive plant management program.
The student’s collected field data were then used by a KLT board member and GIS user to visually portray the differing levels of invasive plant proliferation at different preserves. Coordinates from the students were first organized into data tables by preserve, and then assigned the level of ranked severity of proliferation as identified by the students. Using ArcGIS Pro, the field data was imported as CSV files. The datasets were standardized by ensuring consistent coordinate systems, species naming conventions, and data attributes (e.g., species type, density, date recorded, etc.).
KLT has an overall geodatabase where varying layers can be turned on in order to visualize data. Boundaries of our preserves and trails within them, as well as aerial imagery, were found to be useful layers in visualizing the invasive impact. Graduated color symbology was used to display invasive severity. This process served as an initial first step in visualizing where our invasive species hotspots are and serves as a stepping stone for potential future ArcGIS analysis of the data such as proximity analysis or using geostatistical tools to model potential future distributions based on current patterns and contributing factors.
Mapping invasive species in ArcGIS helps manage ecological threats effectively by providing a clear visual representation and analytical insights to guide intervention strategies. KLT is using this information to see what preserves have the most severe levels of invasive plant proliferation in order to prioritize what preserves need the most attention in combating these plants. The student’s work and GIS mapping will directly translate into action that will protect our natural landscapes by restricting the growth of invasive plants that negatively impact our environment.
