Fire, pollution, and grazing: Oh my! a game in which native and invasive plants compete under multiple disturbance regimes

Abstract

Invasive plants can significantly degrade wildlife habitat, alter soil nutrient cycling, increase the risk of wildfires and floods, consume large amounts of water, and disrupt other ecosystem services. In some instances, managing invasives may be difficult or impossible depending on the scale of the invasion and the amount of time and funding available to address the problem. Furthermore, environmental conditions created by disturbances (e.g., flood, fire) and anthropogenic impacts (e.g., pollution, livestock grazing) can alter the competitive balance between native and invasive plants and either help or complicate management efforts. This chapter describes an interactive game designed to introduce students to the causes, consequences, and management of exotic plant invasions in the context of different ecosystem perturbations. Students will learn about plant community dynamics with a focus on competition between invasive and native plants, the impacts of disturbances on interspecific interactions, and the challenges and threats facing the management and conservation of native vegetation and ecosystem services. After completing the activity, students should be able to (1) define and differentiate among the characteristics of native, exotic, and invasive species; (2) define and distinguish between the effects of anthropogenic impacts and natural disturbances on ecosystems (e.g., fire disturbance, pollution, grazing); and (3) analyze how different environmental conditions created by disturbances and human activities might cause changes in the local abundance and spatial extent of native and invasive plants.