We are trying to establish by data, how human presencepositively impacts the environment. The approach here is to identify growth patterns of invasive species in the presence and absence of human intervention. The COVID-19 Pandemic has given us a unique opportunity to be able to study the effect of human absence on spread of such species. We tried to analyse the data for last three months and establish, that absense of humans has led to an increase in the growth of the invasive plant.
The purpose of this study is to provide insights on, the positive effects of human presence on the environment, to the policy makers while making policies to conserve environment and in response to crisis like COVID-19.
We have picked the growth pattern of the weeds Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) andParthenium. We focussed on Parthenium becasue it is widespread.
Parthenium (Parthenium hysterophorus L) has spread to more than 40 tropical and subtropical countries, earning its place in the list of the world’s 100 worst invasive species. It causes health problems like skin problems and allergies in humans, also the plant is toxic to livestock.
Having lived in India, we have witnessed the problems caused by Hyacinth and have seen the entire water bodies dying because of the unchecked growth of this plant. Such lakes which were used for fishing and thus, had to be regularly cleaned by fishermen, survived the Hyacinth invasion. This observation was the inspiration for our project.
The overall workflow is depicted here. The steps that we were able to complete are marked in green in the workflow. We are working on the orange and blue blocks are yet to be started.
Hyacinth was our natural choice but we did not pursue it because we could not find relevant data. So, we focussed on Parthenium. This proved to be the ideal choice because of its wide spread across the globe, specially in areas like agricultural lands, national parks and wild life sanctuaries (1). Watch this animation to see the growth of Parthenium across the globe.
Our motive was to understand the interaction of Human with Parthenium growth. National parks were our natural choice to study such phenomenon as the human movement changed drastically in these areas during COVID-19.
To have a cross geography reference of native Vs non-native land for this species, we chose to include the following:
a. Everglade national park : Native to the country. (ROI on map)
b. Nagarhole national park : Non-native and has similar climatic conditions to North America. (ROI on map)
View the World wide distribution of Parthenium
Growth Trend
We wanted to find the rate of growth of Parthenium in Everglades National Park(FL). Since this data was not directly available and climate in FL is suitable for growth of Parthenium. We could infer that if not checked the growth of Parthenium will be proportional to the average vegetation growth in that area.
We analysed the yearly trend in spread of Vegetation (fraction) in Everglades florida region in past 4 years.
View Plot of Vegetation from GIOVANNI
We also analysed the monthly trend in spread of Vegetation (fraction) in Everglades florida region in past 4 years.
Monthly trend over last 4 years.
A seasonal trend is observed in the vegetation. However no year on year variation is visible. Observing data for 2020 till the month of April (last available data for 2020) gives no indication of variation.
Using this data we could not get enough evidence to validate our Hypothesis.
Source:https://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov/giovanni/
Selection parameter: Vegetation (NLDAS_NOAH0125_M v002)
Human Visitation Trend
Looking at the data of Footfall for year 2020, we observed that the visitation during the month of April was down by 99.9%. We also got year on year visitation numbers which displayed a regular incoming of around 900,00 people (average) to the Park.
(View visitor trend per year to Everglades). Source:https://irma.nps.gov/STATS/Reports/Park/EVER
Since we could not find the Parthenium growth data for this month, we could not co-relate the growth index to the footfall.
Growth conditions for non-native invasive species: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134665
Using satellite imagery to monitor invasive grass species: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303243417300727
Parthenium flowering information : https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive/weeds/publications/guidelines/wons/pubs/p-hysterophorus.pdf
Distribution and spread information :https://juniperpublishers.com/artoaj/pdf/ARTOAJ.MS.ID.555818.pdf
Due to lack of data we could not analyse the effect of Humans on the growth of the invasive plants in the Everglades Florida region. Since the growth season of Parthenium is March to May, the data of growth from the month of May might indicate the pattern we are looking for.
Elevator pitch:30 sec video
To watch our presentation : Click Here
GIOVANI
BHUVAN
GIBF as mentioned above. All sources are embedded inline.