Developing habitat-suitability maps of invasive ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia.L) in China using GIS and statistical methods

Abstract

Invasive alien species pose a large and growing threat to the economy, public health, and ecological integrity in China. Ragweed (Am-brosia artemisiifolia.L), native to North America, was first documented in China in 1935. As the primary pathogen of pollinosis, ragweed has become a serious menace to public health of China’s population. Explaining and predicting the spatial distribution of ragweed is of great importance to prevention and early warning efforts. We studied the potential distribution of ragweed, the environmental factors that influence its distributions, as well as the ability to compute habitat-suitability maps using GIS and statistical tools. We have developed models using logistic regression based on herbarium specimen locations and a suite of GIS layers including climatic, topographic, and land cover information. Our logistic regression model was based on Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) from a suite of ecologically reasonable predictor variables. Based on the results, we provided a new method to compartmentalize the habitat-suitability in the native range. Finally, we used the model and the compartmentalized criterion developed in the native range to “project” a potential distribution onto the exotic ranges to build habitat-suitability maps.