For the past three years, students from the Terrestrial Ecology course at the State University of New York at Cobleskill have joined forces with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation along with the New York Natural Heritage Program (NYNHP) to use an interactive application to map locations of invasive species around the campus.
Professor Kevin Berner and Instructional Support Assistant Eric Struening taught students how to use field guides to identify plants and classify which ones are invasive species in their area. The students were also trained to contribute data into the NYS Invasive Species Database using iMapInvasives. This system provides natural resource professionals information about species distributions and management efforts. Data comes from many different sources, such as state agencies, non-profit conservation groups, and citizen scientists.
