Potential Spread of Great Lakes Invasive Species Under Climate Change

In this study, we created models for how suitable habitat may change for 30 different invasive species under predicted climate conditions of the Great Lakes region in 2050 and 2070. We compared three different modeling approaches; Boosted Regression Trees (BRT), Maximum Entropy (Maxent) and the new Risk Assessment Mapping Program (RAMP). To quantitatively determine how species ranges may change, I developed a method using the countcolors package in RStudio to calculate the number of climate suitable pixels in each map. We conclude that patterns and impacts of invasive species in the Great Lakes will remain dynamic for decades to come.