Abstract
The current methods
to assess the environmental impacts of plant pests differ in their approaches
and there is a lack of the standardized procedures necessary to provide
accurate and consistent results, demonstrating the complexity of developing a
commonly accepted scheme for this purpose. By including both the structural and
functional components of the environment threatened by invasive alien species
(IAS), in particular plant pests, we propose an environmental risk assessment scheme
that addresses this complexity. Structural components are investigated by
evaluating the impacts of the plant pest on genetic, species and landscape
diversity. Functional components are evaluated by estimating how plant pests
modify ecosystem services in order to determine the extent to which an IAS
changes the functional traits that influence ecosystem services. A scenario
study at a defined spatial and temporal resolution is then used to explore how
an IAS, as an exogenous driving force, may trigger modifications in the target
environment. The method presented here provides a standardized approach to generate
comparable and reproducible results for environmental risk assessment as a
component of Pest Risk Analysis. The method enables the assessment of overall
environmental risk which integrates the impacts on different components of the
environment and their probabilities of occurrence. The application of the
proposed scheme is illustrated by evaluating the environmental impacts of the
invasive citrus long-horn beetle, Anoplophora
chinensis.
Keywords
Environmental risk, Plant
pests, Invasive alien species (IAS), Ecosystem services, Functional biodiversity, Service-providing
units
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