Hot-spot analysis for invasive species using Overture Maps
TL;DR Elizabeth Rosenbloom creates hotspot maps to identify key areas where Arundo donax is likely to spread, streamlining analysis to improve invasive species mitigation.
In 2020 while working in Silicon Valley for the county of Santa Clara Valley, I became obsessed with improving monitoring and prevention efforts surrounding Arundo donax. The search and mitigation process this invasive plant species, Arundo donax, was a Sisophisian struggle that had been subject to the same procedures year in and year out, with no progress on beating the spread. To improve the efficacy and efficiency in battling against this notorious weed, I decided to build a tool that would identify the key areas for mitigation - both for the frequency of propagation (occurrence) and for spread potential.
In this blog post I show how I used Fused to create a map of key hotspots where Arundo donax is likely to spread based on built-environment factors derived from Overture Maps data.