An official website of the United States government.
USGS has published, and plans to update on a bimonthly basis into the foreseeable future, a dataset called "Catalog of U.S. Federal Early Detection/Rapid Response Invasive Species Databases and Tools." The catalog, developed in collaboration with the National Invasive Species Council Secretariat, is a multi-sheet spreadsheet that contains openly available, online, federally supported databases and tools dealing with various aspects of a potential national early detection and rapid response invasive species framework.
Note:Version 2 was updated May 20, 2020.
Databases
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Spotlights
DOI. USGS. ScienceBase Catalog.
IUCN. Species Survival Commission. Invasive Species Specialist Group.
The Global Invasive Species Database aims to increase awareness about invasive alien species and to facilitate effective prevention and management activities. The database focuses on invasive alien species that threaten native biodiversity and covers all taxonomic groups from micro-organisms to animals and plants in all ecosystems. Species information is either supplied by or reviewed by expert contributors from around the world. Provides distribution, life history, and impacts data for invasive species.
See also: 100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species.
figshare.
InvaCost is the most up-to-date, comprehensive, standardized and robust data compilation and description of economic cost estimates associated with invasive species worldwide. InvaCost has been constructed to provide a contemporary and freely available repository of monetary impacts that can be relevant for both research and evidence-based policy making.
CAB International.
The Invasive Species Compendium (ISC) is an encyclopaedic resource that brings together a wide range of different types of science-based information to support decision-making in invasive species management worldwide. It comprises detailed datasheets that have been written by experts, edited by an independent scientific organization, peer reviewed, and enhanced with data from specialist organizations, images, and maps, a bibliographic database and full text articles. New datasheets and data sets continue to be added, datasheets are reviewed and updated, and scientific literature added on a weekly basis. The ISC has been resourced by a diverse international Consortium of Government departments, Non-governmental organizations and private companies. The database is a living compendium and will grow over time.
DOI. USGS. Wetland and Aquatic Research Center.
Serves as a central repository for accurate and spatially referenced biogeographic accounts of nonindigenous aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates. Provided are scientific reports, online/realtime queries, spatial data sets, regional contact lists, and general information for aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates occurring outside of their native range. The geographical coverage is the United States.
Selected Resources
The section below contains highly relevant resources for this subject, organized by source. Or, to display all related content view all resources for Databases
Partnership
Island Conservation; Invasive Species Specialist Group; University of California, Santa Cruz; Maanaki Whenua-Landcare Research; University of Auckland.
A centralized database covering all of the recorded invasive vertebrate eradications on islands and an important tool in helping improve the quality of eradications.
University of Georgia. Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health.
Early Detection and Distribution Mapping System (EDDMapS), provides a more accurate picture of the distribution of invasive species. EDDMapS will allow land managers, agencies, and others to set priorities for early detection and rapid response (EDRR), as well as formulate overall invasive plant management action plans. EDDMapS provides online tools for citizens to report invasive species sightings and maps these sightings to provide distribution information by species, state, and county.
European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization.
Contains several databases: EPPO Codes, EPPO Global Database, EPPO Database on PP1 Standards – Efficacy evaluation of PPPs, EPPO Database on Diagnostic Expertise, and CAPRA (Computer Assisted Pest Risk Analysis).
Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world's governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.
Provides mapping functions for species globally. The GBIF network draws sources together through the use of data standards, such as Darwin Core, which forms the basis for the bulk of GBIF.org's index of hundreds of millions of species occurrence records. Publishers provide open access to their datasets using machine-readable Creative Commons license designations, allowing scientists, researchers, and others to apply the data in hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and policy papers each year. Many of these analyses—which cover topics from the impacts of climate change and the spread of invasive and alien pests to priorities for conservation and protected areas, food security and human health— would not be possible without this.
Midwest Invasive Plant Network.
Provides information on how to control many invasive plants common to the Midwestern U.S. Information was collected from both scientific literature and expert opinions and summarized by the Midwest Invasive Plant Network (MIPN), in partnership with the Mark Renz lab from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
University of Georgia. Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health.
Centre for Invasive Species Solutions; Atlas of Living Australia; Australian Government. Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.
This collection houses Australia's most accurate and detailed listing of weeds within Australia and provides descriptions of their status in each Australian jurisdiction, as well as information about their physical and biological characteristics, diagnostic features, impacts, management strategies and methods, distribution and links to key resource and documents.
Federal Government
DOI. USGS. Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation.
USGS Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON) is a unique, web-based Federal mapping resource for species occurrence data in the United States and its Territories. BISON’s size is unprecedented, including records for most living species found in the United States and encompassing the efforts of more than a million professional and citizen scientists. Most of BISON’s species occurrence records are specific locations, not just county or State records.
As of August 2019, BISON added a new nonnative species data filter to our web user interface. This new data filter is based on the "First Comprehensive List of Non-Native Species Established in Three Major Regions of the United States" U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2018-1156. "Listing what species are non-native in an area helps measure Essential Biodiversity Variables for invasive species monitoring and mount an effective response to established non-native species" (Simpson and Eyler, 2018).
USDA. FS. Rocky Mountain Research Station. Fire Sciences Laboratory.
This database contains literature reviews of botanical characteristics, life cycle, habitat, succession, distribution, impacts, fire ecology, and fire effects for 1000 plant and animal species, including 67 non-native invasive species. Future plans include updating many of these "species summaries" and adding 30-40 more summaries of non-native invasives over the next 1.5 years.
DOC. NOAA. Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.
The present database targets nonindigenous aquatic species that are not considered to have been native to any part of the Great Lakes basin. GLANSIS functions as a Great Lakes specific node of the USGS NAS national database.
Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Marine Invasions Research Lab.
NEMESIS is a resource for information on non-native (or exotic) species that occur in coastal marine waters of the United States. This relational database compiles detailed information on approximately 500 different non-native species of plants, fish, invertebrates, protists and algae that have invaded our coastal waters. The database identifies which species have been reported, their current population status (i.e., whether established or not), as well as when, where, and how they invaded; it also summarizes key information on the biology, ecology, and known impacts of each invader.
USDA. NRCS. National Plant Data Center.
The PLANTS Database provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories. The database includes names, checklists, automated tools, identification information, species abstracts, distributional data, crop information, plant symbols, plant growth data, plant materials information, plant links, references, and other plant information. The PLANTS database contains native and naturalized plants of the PLANTS Floristic Area (PFA), which consists of North America and all additional U.S. territories and protectorates.
Note: The Invasive/Noxious Weeds data in the previous PLANTS version were outdated and not migrated to the new PLANTS version (new site launched in Spring 2021). A new PLANTS Invasive/Noxious Weeds dataset has been developed and will be deployed to PLANTS in a later release.
Professional
Entomological Society of America.
The Entomological Society of America (ESA) Common Names database is an essential reference for anyone who works with insects. It includes more than 2,000 common names and is searchable by common name, scientific name, author, order, family, genus, and species.