Implications for Management Prioritization of Exotic Annual Weed Monitoring Near Roadsides in the Eastern Mojave Desert, USA

Invasive exotic plants provide an unnatural conduit for fires in the Mojave Desert. For the last five years, roadside monitoring for exotic invasive species has been a common practice for documenting distributions in Clark County, Nevada (Abella et al., in press). Yet, studies have shown that weed relationships to road corridors differ depending upon the natural system (Hansen and Clevenger, 2005). In the Mojave Desert, it is unknown whether exotic species are limited to or even predominant along roadsides. Compounding this uncertainty, fertile islands under shrubs are known to enhance conditions for many annuals (Thompson et al., 2005). Thus, a site’s shrub composition could influence exotic invasive plant distributions