UNH, UMaine to study economic impact of invasive plants, Fosters.com reports
Fosters.com reported researchers with the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of New Hampshire have received a $499,883 USDA grant to investigate the economics of managing invasive plants in forests owned by private landowners. Jessica Leahy, an associate professor of human dimensions of natural resources at the University of Maine, is on the team of researchers working on the project, according to the article. The researchers plan to map risk of glossy buckthorn invasion in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts, estimate costs and benefits of available and new glossy buckthorn control strategies; conduct focus groups, surveys and choice experiments among landowners within the invasion hot spot areas to estimate their willingness to adopt available management strategies; and develop spatial bioeconomic models to understand whether and how landowner characteristics affect negative spillovers in forest plant invasion management, the article states.