Abstract
Invasive plants can significantly degrade wildlife habitat, alter soil nutrient cycling, increase the risk of wildfires and floods, consume large amounts of water, and disrupt other ecosystem services. In some instances, managing invasives may be difficult or impossible depending on the scale of the invasion and the amount of time and funding available to address the problem. Furthermore, environmental conditions created by disturbances (e.g., flood, fire) and anthropogenic impacts (e.g., pollution, livestock grazing) can alter the competitive balance between native and invasive plants and either help or complicate management efforts. This chapter describes an interactive game designed to introduce students to the causes, consequences, and management of exotic plant invasions in the context of different ecosystem perturbations. Students will learn about plant community dynamics with a focus on competition between invasive and native plants, the impacts of disturbances on interspecific interactions, and the challenges and threats facing the management and conservation of native vegetation and ecosystem services. After completing the activity, students should be able to (1) define and differentiate among the characteristics of native, exotic, and invasive species; (2) define and distinguish between the effects of anthropogenic impacts and natural disturbances on ecosystems (e.g., fire disturbance, pollution, grazing); and (3) analyze how different environmental conditions created by disturbances and human activities might cause changes in the local abundance and spatial extent of native and invasive plants.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Cal-IPC (2014) The impact of invasive plants. California Invasive Plant Council. http://www.cal-ipc.org/ip/definitions/impact.php. Accessed 11 Dec 2014
Gurevitch J, Schneider SM, Fox GA (2006) The ecology of plants, 2nd edn. Sinauer Associates, Inc., Sunderland, MA
Hejda MP, Pysek P, Jarosik V (2009) Impact of invasive plants on the species richness, diversity and composition of invaded communities. J Ecol 97:393–403
Mack RN, Simberloff D et al (2000) Biotic invasions: causes, epidemiology, global consequences and control. Issues Ecol 5:1–20
Van Andel J, Aronson J (2012) Restoration ecology: the new frontier, 2nd edn. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ
Vilà M, Espinar JL, Hejda M et al (2011) Ecological impacts of invasive alien plants: a meta-analysis of their effects on species, communities and ecosystems. Ecol Lett 14:702–708
Sekercioglu CH (2010) Ecosystems functions and services. In: Sodhi NS, Ehrlich PR (eds) Conservation biology for all. Oxford University Press, London (Available online at: https://conbio.org/publications/free-textbook)
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships at the University of California, Santa Barbara for funding the development of this activity as part of the School for Scientific Thought program. LC Sweet was supported in part during the preparation of this contribution by the National Science Foundation, NSF #EF-1065864, and HE Schneider was supported in part by NSF #DEB-1142784.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Electronic Supplemental Materials (ESM)
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schneider, H.E., Sweet, L.C. (2016). Fire, Pollution, and Grazing: Oh My! A Game in Which Native and Invasive Plants Compete Under Multiple Disturbance Regimes. In: Byrne, L. (eds) Learner-Centered Teaching Activities for Environmental and Sustainability Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28543-6_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28543-6_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28541-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28543-6
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)