Hi everyone, I'm Mitch O'Neill,
I'm with the New York Natural Heritage Program.
And in New York we also do some invasive species work.
So I'm part of the team
that works on the invasive species database.
So today what I'll be talking about is our monitoring
efforts for spotted lanternfly in New York State.
So essentially, how we leveraged community scientists
to kind of get better coverage of the state.
So as an example, here's our survey data
for spotted lanternfly from 2018 to 2020.
The yellows are not detecteds and the greens are presences.
And how leveraging volunteers, starting in 2021,
we were able to get better coverage in the state.
So I'm sure many of you have heard of spotted lanternfly,
invasive insect from, came in from Asia,
showed up in Pennsylvania a few years ago,
and since then has been spreading
to other Northeastern states.
Vermont, I think it's known in,
it was seen in one county.
Lots of efforts to try to monitor the spread,
to try to limit the spread,
quarantine zones in Pennsylvania,
there are detector dogs that sniff out spotted lanternflies,
and there's actually another, there's a talk
about that right now in a different room.
Let's stay here please, I guess.
(audience laughs)
And there are bag traps, survey efforts,
lots of efforts going on in New York State.
Ag and Markets is leading efforts,
but they work with a bunch of organizations and agencies,
including the PRISM Network.
So I might mention PRISMs a couple times.
I'm saying P-R-I-S-M, not prisons like jails.
So it's PRISM, Partnership for Regional
Invasive Species Management.
New York State's divided into these eight regions,
where there's an organization
that sort of leads and coordinates management efforts.
But no matter, so lots of great organizations
doing a lot of great work, but even so,
New York State is huge, we can't possibly
cover the whole area with staff alone.
And that could be said for any state.
But luckily there are often people from the general public
who are interested in natural resources
and can help fill these data gaps if you work with them.
And before I get into that, I want to give
a basic intro to what iMapInvasives is.
so it's an online invasive species database
and mapping system powered by NatureServe.
And it's used in several states
and provinces across North America.
In New York it's administered
by the Natural Heritage Program.
And one really cool thing about iMap
is the the wide variety of people who could use it.
So anyone from general public up to professionals,
agency staff can use iMapInvasives to track invasives
and help their work to protect our natural resources
from the negative impacts of invasive species.
And it has a bunch of features,
but I'll mostly be talking today about the ability
to report to iMapInvasives, and to view distribution data
in iMapInvasives, and also in a moment,
I'll touch on email alerts as well.
So,
Ag and Markets is trying to monitor this really fast
spreading species that's suddenly here and moving around.
We can't cover everywhere.
We need to look, with just agency staff,
and we need more eyes on the ground and we need data
from those people surveying to go into a centralized
database where Ag and Markets can review reports.
And so Ag and Markets has these needs,
New York Natural Heritage Program
administers this database for invasive species.
So naturally conversation started,
and we realized what we want, what would help
all of us would be a network of trained iMap volunteers
who pick locations to survey and check
for spotted lanterfly and tree of heaven
throughout the year and then report presence
and not detected back to iMapInvasives.
And so that's where this idea was kind of born,
this thing to ask volunteers to do.
So to go through a couple pieces of it.
So we want people to check for spotted lanternfly,
that's of course the priority species.
Lots of impacts.
The main impacts of concern are mainly agricultural
at this point, but there are are potential
for other impacts as well.
It spreads so quickly,
it's not known in most of the states.
So in a lot of the state, a new spotted lanternfly
record is a really big deal.
Tree of heaven is a little bit different.
It's already pretty widespread.
It's not much of a surprise if we find
tree of heaven in most counties in New York,
besides maybe the northern part of the state.
But it has a really strong connection
with spotted lanternfly, so it's the preferred host.
Spotted lanterfly really loves to get their favorite foods.
They tend to be healthier when
they're associated with the tree of heaven.
So it's a really good place to check for spotted lanternfly.
So if people find tree of heaven,
that's a good place to check for spotted lanternfly,
'cause they're often drawn to tree of heaven.
Another piece is reporting presence
and not detected records to iMap.
So even if they don't find something,
we want them to report it.
So we have the survey documented,
so they can report the time searched, stuff like that.
But if it's presence, they report a presence record.
So those go in as unconfirmed,
since this database can be used by anyone,
general public, professionals.
And people often include a picture, that's encouraged.
And so when reports come in, email alerts are triggered
to our partners for them to see that there's new records
of this species in this county and whatnot.
And then they're reviewed by experts.
So for spotted lanternfly records, those are reviewed
by Ag and Market staff, and for tree of heaven records,
those are reviewed by some other partners we have,
like PRISM staff often confirm these as well.
And then one important piece
which I haven't talked about yet
is the whole pick a location idea and where that came from.
And this isn't a new idea that we came up with ourselves.
It has been done before.
So I think in New York we have the Breeding Bird Atlas,
where people pick a grid square and survey.
And there are other other groups
that have done this as well.
But essentially picking a location to survey
is a form of a commitment which has been identified
in social science and behavioral science
as a really important factor in getting people
to actually carry out on an action that they intend to do.
And Ken Donnelly is a social scientist who has a website
called Beyond Attitude where you can
learn more about that sort of stuff.
So we came up with this claim a grid Square idea.
So Ag and Markets, Parks, DEC, Heritage Program,
we worked together and made this this map, this public map,
for volunteers to go and pick a location to survey.
It has one kilometer grid squares
across the state identified where we need volunteer help,
where that volunteer help would be most effective
in complimenting our professional efforts.
So that means areas where we want people to look.
So areas that Ag and Market staff have picked
as somewhere we want volunteers to look
that they won't be sending their staff to.
Grid squares with public access land,
where volunteers can check, grid squares with known
confirmed tree of heaven, based on iMap data.
'Cause those are great places to check
for spotted lanternfly, but also excluding the areas
where we don't really need to direct volunteers.
So areas where we already know
spotted lanternfly is everywhere there.
Like Staten Island was kind of the first
big infestation in New York state,
or areas that we know are already covered by staff.
'Cause we really want volunteers to build on and increase
our coverage rather than duplicate efforts.
I'll skip the technical details of that.
Just to give an idea of what we are kind of aiming for.
This is data from over the summer, if I remember correctly.
So those gray grid squares are squares that volunteers
went in and claimed as their spot.
They clicked the signup and put in their name
and their email so we can send the reminders,
and they reported not detected records.
And you can see a lot of the not detected records
in this region are falling in the grid squares.
So that's what we're trying to get to.
We're trying to drive volunteers to these areas
which have been identified as places
where we want their help.
And of course volunteers are also
looking at other locations as well, and that's great too.
So we launched it in 2021, and repeated it for 2022.
A lot of what we did was leverage
existing volunteer networks.
We didn't create this whole new group of volunteers,
we kind of built off of other projects.
So we pushed out the request to like
the Master Gardeners program, and PRISMs
have their own volunteer networks as well,
to try to get people to join in on this statewide effort.
And so far it's been producing some useful data.
So we've gotten reports in most
of the counties in New York state at this point.
So in 2021 I know we had data in at least 169 grid squares.
For 2022 it was 95 back in September.
I just haven't incorporated the fall data yet.
And to give context for what we had
before 2020, before 2021, so most of the data
was coming in from professionals,
and most of it's not detected 'cause spotted lanternfly
was only known in a couple of places back then.
Now spotted lanternfly has spread in more areas,
but still not in most of the state.
And so there was definitely an increase
in the professionals, if you look at the left hand column.
But if you look at the right, there was really
a more dramatic increase in data from volunteers.
And just to highlight that a little bit,
so from the 2018 to 2020 period to the 2021 to 2022 period,
when we tried to garner more volunteers,
we went from over 200 records to almost 3,000,
and it went from about 17% volunteer data
to about 85% volunteer data.
So the volunteers really helped give us better coverage
and get a better idea of where
spotted lanternfly is popping up.
And one thing that's not necessarily on this map are,
there's also survey efforts going on by Ag
and Markets agency staff as well.
And so these were some things we have
found useful in trying this for two years.
So the idea of a commitment has been helpful,
getting people to sign up and claim a location
gives them a concrete goal
and something they feel ownership over.
It's a grid square with their name on it.
Also, we've been trying to set up volunteers for success.
So we really need concrete,
achievable and measurable goals for them.
This is something we did better in 2022 than 2021,
and I'll talk about that in a second.
And we also want to make sure that our volunteers
have the skills that they need to do
whatever we're asking them to do.
So in this case, they need to know
how to identify the species.
They need to understand the life cycle
of spotted lanternfly, how to identify it,
how to do surveys, and also how to report to iMap.
So for that sort of information,
we did some webinar trainings that we recorded,
and we maintained a webpage with resources.
We sent reminders throughout the season,
that was really helpful for volunteers
who might sign up in March.
We want them to remember that they signed up
for this project when spotted lanternfly
season comes around in July.
We found that volunteers, they like to know
that they're a part of something greater.
So we've been trying to do a better job
of keeping them updated on the progress
of these monitoring efforts as a whole,
so they understand how they fit in.
And rewarding participants is also really important.
So far we've kind of been stuck at just sending
thank you emails and thanking volunteers.
But ideally going more,
going farther there would be helpful.
So giving volunteers who completed their surveys
certificates or giving a prize to the top reporter,
that sort of thing really helps
incentivize volunteers and make them feel valued.
And also it's been important to collect feedback
and integrate that into the program.
So, for an example of some of those points,
we sent out a survey to our volunteers at the end of 2021.
Some highlights, luckily most of them said
it was a positive or mostly positive experience.
Some of them reported that claiming the location
was what motivated them to actually do the survey.
But one weakness was that a lot
of our volunteers were unclear on the goals.
So we basically asked volunteers to go out and survey
for spotted lanternfly and tree of heaven
multiple times through the year.
And that was like, that was all the details in our request.
So we gave like a goal of like 10 records I think.
But there's a lot of question of,
throughout the year, what does that mean,
do I go in June and then again in July,
do I go in June and then October, do I go every month?
So we tried to improve that for 2022.
And that also made it hard for us to assess
how many of our volunteers actually did
what we asked them, because what we asked
them was not very specific.
So this year, in 2022, we created
these four distinct survey seasons.
Spring, early summer, late summer, fall.
Those were kind of framed around different
life stages for spotted lanternfly,
so the egg masses versus the nymphs versus the adults.
And then laying egg masses again.
And we gave a more concrete goal of reporting
presence and not detected records
in your grid square for at least two seasons.
If you could do all four, that would be the main goal.
But at least two seasons was the minimum we encouraged.
And then those four distinct survey seasons
helped us time out our education and outreach
and our reminders to kind of be scheduled with those seasons
and which life stages are active at those times.
And so what that's gonna allow us to do this year
is we're gonna actually be able to,
so last year we knew that 169
grid squares had some data in them.
This year we'll be able to more specifically see
what's the number of grid squares that were successfully
monitored for how many seasons.
So I know there were like 25 that were completed
in the early summer season,
and then 57 that were partially completed.
And then there's a different number for each season.
And we'll be able to see how many grid squares
had like continued monitoring throughout the summer.
And so I've been talking about spotted lanternfly,
which is, the agricultural impacts are very well known.
But this whole, this sort of concept of claiming locations
to go report iMap records has
also been applied to forest pests.
So HWA, BLD, the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program,
they're one of the PRISMs.
They use these Adirondack trail adoption maps
for their forest pest hunters volunteer program.
And so for HWA, hundreds of trails adopted by volunteers
which led to over 400 iMap observations.
And then in this year they also started a beech leaf disease
monitoring program, and they used this signup map as well.
So there's definitely a lot of potential
for this to be applied to spotted lanternfly
as well as other species.
So some quick take home messages.
Community science offers concrete help to filling data gaps.
And we found that claimable locations can serve
as concrete commitments for volunteers to make.
And we've also found it really important
to leverage existing volunteer networks.
So, it's really hard to build one on your own.
Luckily there are some that exist in a lot of places.
Another important thing is that you always have
to start somewhere and improve each year.
So the program was not perfect last year.
It's not perfect this year.
And it won't be perfect next year.
But I think each year we are producing some useful data
and it keeps building from there.
And also collaboration between agencies,
conservation partners from local to regional scales,
and database managers is essential.
So I have a quote on the slide
which is from Thom Allgaier, who's actually here.
But essentially Ag and Markets has found the data
from this project useful in helping direct their staff.
So I've seen a lot of cases where spotted lanternfly
might be reported somewhere, like a single individual,
and then Ag and Market staff are sent out to go check
if it's just that one dead adult sitting on the sidewalk,
or is there an infestation nearby, that sort of thing.
And it also gives you an idea of where people
have at least checked, our volunteers may or may not
have checked for spotted lanternfly.
And I'd like to acknowledge a lot of our partners.
So my colleagues Colleen and John,
who did the the web mapping for the state
grid square project, Thom at Ag and Markets,
and some of our other partners.
So yeah, I might have talked sooner--
One minute, one question.
Okay, yeah.
[Audience Member] Going back to the beginning,
your map of where iMapInvasives,
actually you don't have to go, I'm just gonna ask you,
but where iMapInvasives has active programs,
it looked like there was a gap in part of it?
Yeah, yeah, it's not all--
I'm sorry, not all states have an active program.
Right, yeah.
-And we don't-- -Okay.
[Audience Member] The FEMC is New York and Maine.
-Yes. -But the rest of the--
Areas are reporting on recording invasives.
[Audience Member] Do you leverage your dataset
with other programs that already have a huge
like client base for species monitoring detections
like the iNaturalist, have you tried collaborating
with them to try and have them adopt basic monitoring
as part of their like web application
or anything like that?
Yeah, we do, so in, yeah, a lot of people
use iNaturalist, and so we try to leverage that data.
So there's, the data from iNaturalist can be viewed in iMap,
like you can turn on the layer to view iNaturalist data,
and a lot of spotted lanternfly was reported in iNaturalist
'cause it's a big showy species, it's brightly colored.
And we do, like, there is a lot
of data sharing that happens.
So for like aquatics, we send data to the USGS, NAS,
the non-indigenous aquatic species database.
We send data there and they send it to us.
And there has been talk for the past couple years
of hopefully trying to get to this place
where the data sharing is more streamlined.
So like our iMap data is served
as a live web mapping service,
so you can like pull the live data
into other web mapping platforms.
So there's an idea that hopefully
that's gonna exist everywhere.
And so like you can see everyone's data in every database,
but that's not happening yet.
[Audience Member] Are these data being used
-for any kind of management? -The iMap data?
-Yeah. -Yes, yeah,
we work closely with state agencies
like Ag and Markets and also with the PRISMs.
So a lot of the PRISMs use iMap for, like I said,
reports from volunteers kind of serve as part
of their early detection network and helps
them prioritize where to do management.
And it is the official database
for invasive species for New York state.
-Yes. -And New York state
Department of Transportation also uses it.
Yes.
All right, well it's transition time,
-so, thank you very much. -(audience applauds)