Establishment Of Invasive Risk Assessment System For Alien Introduced Terrestrial Plants In East China

Alien plant invasion is very serious in east China, and a lot of invasive plant species wereintroduced into the local through the way of artificial introduction. This study established andvalidated the invasion risk assessment for alien introduced terrestrial plants in east China.Besides, the risk assessment system was used to conduct the invasion risk of some alienterrestrial plant species in Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, and chose several species tomake predictions of their potential distributions; the results can provide references for thecomprehensive risk analysis of these species. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Based on species’ characteristics, natural environment, human activities these threeaspects, the study used the method of multi-level index comprehensive assessment, establishedthe invasive risk assessment system for alien introduced terrestrial plants in east China. Thesystem was divided into “existing” and “haven’t been introduced” two status, and usedanalytic hierarchy process to weight assignment indexes at all levels.(2) This study chose52alien terrestrial plant species in different hazard levels, and usedthem to validate the assessment system in two statuses. The results proved that system wasaccurate and operable. And in the premise of Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden as theintroduced region, the results determined four risk rating score areas for alien terrestrial plants.(3) According to the list of plant species in Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden, thestudy chose49alien terrestrial species which were suitable for the risk assessment system.(4) By using the assessment system in “existing” status for the chosen49species,9species at the second risk level were got. There were also18species at the third risk level and22species at the fourth risk level. The high score species and the species which were escapedor harmful all need to be monitored and prevented.(5)7species were chosen from the49species to make predictions of potentialdistribution with Maxent. The7species were: Coreopsis grandiflora, Hieracium aurantiacum,Panicum virgatum, Verbascum thapsu, Symphytum officinale, Barbarea vulgaris, Asclepiascurassavica. The results showed that these species were suitable to live in east China in varydegrees. AUC values of the results were all greater than0.9, showed high predictive accuracy.(6) Based on the above researches on risk analysis of alien plant invasion, severalmanagement advices were proposed for alien introduced terrestrial plants. Besidesstrengthening the management of alien species, biological invasion preventing work alsoneeded to make invasive assessment for introduced region, encourage public participation,establish network data platform, and make preventing and controlling cost budget forintroduced species.