Title : How GIS software is helping us manage plants in the face of global challenges such as invasion, extinction, and climate change
Abstract:
Plant science has made significant progress in recent years, owing to the application of state-of-the-art technologies, methodologies, and data. These important advancements have significant repercussions for sustainability and global transformation, allowing plant science to understand, preserve, and utilize the vital diversity of plants that is critical to life on Earth. But our planet is also a fragile place, where plant life is threatened by many ills, some of which are caused by human activity. Among these ills, there are invasive plants and species extinction, two phenomena that endanger biodiversity, ecosystems, economy, and health. In this presentation, we analyse the impact of these issues and explore how plant science can aid in addressing them. GIS software is a crucial tool in collecting, storing, analysing, and presenting geographic data essential to plant science and accomplishing this goal. GIS software enables us to map plant species distribution, model their spatial and temporal dynamics, assess their vulnerability to threats, identify priority areas for conservation and restoration, and simulate future scenarios regarding global change. We will demonstrate how we used GIS software (MaxEnt V3.3.3 k; ArcGIS 9.3, R version 3.2.0 2.) to study four specific cases: Three invasive alien plants: Chromolaena odorata (L.) King & Robinson (Compositae), Hopea odorata Roxb (Dipterocarpaceae), and Lantana camara L. (Verbenaceae) and one threatened plant species on the IUCN red list: Pterocarpus erinaceus Poir (Fabaceae).
