Summary

Description

In 20102013, Utah State University partnered with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service USFWS to conduct invasive plant prioritization workshops and inventories on selected National Wildlife Refuges across the United States. The purpose of these workshops and subsequent inventories was to inform and improve the process of planning and implementing invasive plant inventories or early detection. These workshops highlighted the need for an objective, transparent and documented process for deciding which invasive plant species should be a focus of inventory or early detection and ultimately management and where. A result of this partnership is the Invasive Plant Inventory and Early Detection Prioritization Tool IPIEDT and associated users guide. The tool is a Microsoft Access database 2010 or later that utilizes sitespecific knowledge and harnesses existing species information e.g., California Invasive Plant Council invasive species rankings to identify priority species and areas for inventory or early detection. The users guide describes how to use the IPIEDT. Although the IPIEDT was developed for the National Wildlife Refuge System it can be applied wherever invasive plants pose a threat to natural resources. The tool produces a ranked list of areas and invasive plant species to consider for inventory or early detection. Users can also create areaspecific ranked species lists or lists that distinguish species occurring within or outside early detection the spatial scope of the project. The users guide 1 describes the design of the invasive plant inventory and early detection prioritization tool IPIEDT, 2 describes and provide the rationale of criteria used to rank species and areas and 3 provides stepbystep instructions on how to use the tool. Appendix A of the guide describes ranking criteria and corresponding scales of the IPIEDT. Appendix B of the guide provides a stepbystep guide to the prioritization process and use of the IPIEDT. Appendix C of the guide explains the species invasiveness ranking systems utilized by the IPIEDT.