Identifying climate change as a factor in the establishment and persistence of invasive weeds in agricultural crops.

Abstract

Abstract Climate change may lead to extensive shifts in invasive weed distributions by impacting their colonization and persistence in new habitats. These alterations will require an enhanced capacity to predict the future range of these species and the implementation of effective management strategies. This is particularly critical for agroecosystems where climate-induced changes in the composition and impact of weedy species are likely to add great uncertainty to the biodiversity, stability and productivity of these systems. In recent years, various modelling approaches have been employed to examine the current and potential distributions of invasive weeds at a range of scales in response to projected climate change. This chapter details the efforts under way to map the distributions of invasive weed species based on climate change projections for the USA. The chapter also identifies specific agricultural systems that are most vulnerable to invasion in a changing climate. It concludes with a brief discussion of the un certain ties, future directions and challenges of current modelling approaches and provides suggestions for improvement. Although bioclimatic envelope modelling has provided a useful approach for projecting potential weed species distribution changes resulting from climatic change (see Chapter 15), there is a need to incorporate more details of weed physiology and genetics, as well as habitat complexity, in these models. Given rapidly increasing anthropogenic impacts, land-use changes and climate variability, such refinements to the modelling approach could be critical to managing plant invasions under climate change.