Increasing Resistance and Reducing Vulnerability to Invasive Species at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore

Invasive plant species pose a significant threat to long-term ecosystem health, especially as new invasives continue to arise. Current invasive management strategies mainly focus on reducing or eliminating single species through chemical and physical removal methods. However, these reactive approaches are often costly, time intensive, and lack long-term success. Many practitioners are increasingly interested in a preemptive, resistance-based approach to management that focuses on actively reducing an ecosystem’s vulnerability to invasion. Such an approach allows practitioners to address multiple invasives at once, increasing the efficiency, costeffectiveness, and overall sustainability of managing invasive species. We aimed to meet the widespread need for improved understanding and ability to implement this alternative systemsbased management approach, specifically as it applies to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL). We used three main sources to inform our recommendations: 1) review of current research on resistance and vulnerability to invasion, 2) analysis of existing monitoring and spatial data at SBDNL related to vulnerability, and 3) perspectives and experiences of on the ground practitioners.Master of ScienceSchool for Environment and SustainabilityUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167363/3/IncreasingResistancetoInvasiveSpecies_376.pd