Achievement

LEAP has promoted interdisciplinary and inter-institution research collaborations focusing on invasive species in urban ecosystems. One example is research on factors associated with invasion of exotic buckthorn in the Chicago region, coordinated by LEAP fellow Basil Iannone. Collaborations among researchers at UIC, UIUC, and DePaul University have demonstrated the conditions including total C, total N, pH, Ca++, moisture, spring litter mass, and NH4-N promote buckthorn invasion. Interdisciplinary work with the College of Urban Planning and Policy led to the development of a computational agent based model to further identify biological traits that allow plant species to invade urban woodlands. This research has been presented at national conferences and will result in three to four peer-reviewed journal articles.