Invasive Species Mapping in Harpswell, Maine

Project Background

The Harpswell Coastal Academy is collaborating with the Harpswell Heritage Land Trust and the Town of Harpswell in efforts to detect and map emerging invasive flora and to investigate the impacts of eradicating Asiatic Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) from high impact areas.
The Harpswell Community Makerspace will work closely with all parties to develop tools and capabilities that help facilitate project goals.

Purpose of this Wiki

This purpose of this wiki will be to facilitate a constructive dialog between the Civic Hacking/Maker community (including Makerspace members and the larger community) and the local project partners. Links and descriptions of related research notes will be continuously added and edited until such a point when a subpage will be created.

Makerspace Goals

• Work closely with students and faculty of Harpswell Coastal Academy to integrate development activities into existing curriculum
• Engage the collective expertise of the greater Civic Hacker/Maker Community and provide proper attribution
• Engage the knowledge of the local community

• Emphasize project documentation in a manner that

  • builds on existing open source research (where possible)
  • recognizes the contributions of earlier participants
  • Allows for iterative development in the future
  • Can be easily utilized as interpretive materials for community outreach

General Project Goals

Assessing the impact of eradicating Asiatic Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) in test plots

• Identify a site for experimental and control plots.
• Identify parameters to collect baseline data on.

• Possibilities include:

  • Species richness of native plants, before and after eradication.
  • Percent coverage of native plants, before and after eradication.
  • Animal observations (e.g. woodcock)

• Collect baseline data April-Spring 2014

• Present baseline data at HCA symposium June 2014

Mapping emergent invasive flora on public lands in Harpswell

• Identify 2-3 properties for mapping effort

• Survey properties for species

• Identify 2-4 emergent species of concern.

• Determine optimal time for detecting and quantifying each species

• Develop interpretive materials to help volunteers identify species in the field and in their own properties