Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) invasive plant species data from the eastern United States, intersected with wildland-urban interface (WUI) status and land cover context

Non-native invasive plants are a persistent and growing threat to U.S. forests. Meanwhile, the amount of forest within the wildland-urban interface (WUI) is increasing, with the expectation that the disturbance caused by housing and the establishment of landscaping plants may enable the spread of non-native plants. This data publication contains combined invasive plant information from approximately 45,000 forest inventory plots (collected between 2010 and 2018); WUI spatial data from 1990, 2000, and 2010; and national land cover data from 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016 to test four hypotheses: (1) WUI forests are more invaded than non-WUI forests; (2) WUI intermix forests (where houses mingle with forest) are more invaded than interface forests (where housing abuts forest); (3) WUI forests experience a delay in invasion (i.e., invasion debt) following housing development; and (4) the invasion of WUI forests is associated with disturbance and propagule pressure (based on land cover context). The resulting tabular data include: standard plot information such as location, elevation, aspect, slope, etc.; binary flags denoting if the plot was WUI, housing mingled with forest (intermix), housing that abuts forest (interface), etc. in 1990, 2000, and 2010; information regarding the number of tree species and number of invasive species on the plot; and the percent of agricultural, developed, and forest landcover within 81 hectare window around the specified FIA plot in 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016.
These data were developed to assess the degree to which eastern U.S. forests in the wildland-urban interface are invaded by non-native plants, and whether the invasion of WUI forests is associated with land cover context (forested, developed, and agricultural).
For more information, please see Potter et al. (2024). These data were published on 10/07/2024. Minor metadata updates were made on 11/22/2024.