Here I give a short chronological account of our work in the range expansion and management of the highly allergeneous plant ragweed (native to Northern America).
Modelling the spread of ragweed: Effects of habitat, climate change and diffusion
Here the scientific problem is stated, along with a glimpse on the results of what was then a work in progress.
This invited contribution to an issue on ''Transport, Localisation and Fluctuations in Complex Systems'' was published in the
European Physical Journal Special Topics, volume
161, 167 (2008). I am allowed to make the accepted version in my own formatting available
here. The final publication is available at
link.springer.com.
Integrating species distribution models and interacting particle systems to predict the spread of an invasive alien plant
Traditional methods for describing the geographical range of animals or plants are at a loss when it comes to invasive species: either they neglect the temporal component and assume that the distribution is in the steady state, or they describe an ideal spread without taking into account the variation in the habitat quality. In this paper we present a semi-phenomenological model which takes into account both aspects and show that it can describe the recent spread of
Ambrosia Artemisiifolia into Austria better than both of the above approaches.
It has been published by the
Journal of Biogeography online on 16th of November, 2009, and in print form in the volume
37, 411 (2010).
How to account for habitat suitability in weed management programmes?
After the validation of our model in the previous article (and implementing enhancements of certain aspects of parameter estimation and the model itself), we now apply it to project the future range expansion of ragweed, and we consider different methodological approaches to surveillance and eradication of the species.
The article has been
published online on 2nd of September, 2012, and in print form in
Biological Invasions, volume
15, 657 (2013).
Spread of invasive ragweed: climate change, management and how to reduce allergy costs
After the preparatory work in fundamental science, this contribution is now a work of applied ecology, that tries to give quantitative answers and suggestions: We tried to derive the actual health costs via pollen dispersal under up-to-date predictions for climate warming (and concomitant habitat expansion), and we compare it to the mitigations achievable by certain investments.
It has been
published online on 27th of August, 2013, and in print form by the
Journal of Applied Ecology, volume
50, 1422 (2013).
