Understanding the recent expansion in range and abundance of Invasive plant species in a Terai Ecosystem

Das, Amit (2019) Understanding the recent expansion in range and abundance of Invasive plant species in a Terai Ecosystem. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

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Abstract

Invasive plant species are non-native or alien to that particular ecosystem and can cause economic, environmental impairment and harm to human health. These plant species have become increasingly troublesome in tropical and sub-tropical ecosystems due to their widened range and abundance which aggravated their potential to decrease native plant diversity, increase fire occurrence, and cause ecosystem degradation. Till now, the factors promoting invasive species are mostly unknown. Factors like disturbance due to fire, grazing, roads, human activities, reduction of indigenous diversity, and soil fertility can promote or demote invasion from the invasive plant species. During 2018-19, we studied distribution and abundance of invasive species in a 519 km2 Manas National Park. Mikania micrantha (a climber) and Chromolaena odorata (a shrub) and Mimosa pudica are the most abundant invasive plants found in our 77 plots of 30x30 m2 size. We wanted to know whether linear disturbance and environmental predictors are crucial for the abundance and distribution of the Invasive plant species in the Manas National Park. Our results show that the ten environmental predictors we used for our analysis using ordinal regression model can significantly predict the invasive plant species density (Mikania, R²=0.575; Chromolaena, R²= 0.419; Mimosa, R²= 0.419). On top of that, we found invasive plant density is inversely proportional to the distance from the road. As we increase the distance from the road, the occurrence of those plant species decreases and diminishes after a particular distance.

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