CHARLEMONT — The first lecture in this year’s Charlemont Forum speaker series will be about the dangers of invasive species.
Bethany Bradley, a professor of biogeography and spatial ecology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will lead the presentation on Thursday, May 7, at 7 p.m. at the Charlemont Federated Church, located at 175 Main St. (Route 2). A Zoom link for the talk is also available at tinyurl.com/CharlemontForumBradley.
Bradley will discuss the rise of invasive plant species and the steps that homeowners who unknowingly plant non-native or invasive species can take to mitigate the impact to the ecosystem. She will also speak about how to navigate the impact that climate change has had on the ability of native plant species to survive in their home ecosystem, and how gardeners can potentially improve the likelihood of these species’ survival in the future.
“Thinking about what we’re planting in our garden and how we can be better stewards of ecosystems based on what we’re putting in our gardens, that is really the focus of what I’m going to talk about on Thursday,” Bradley said. “It’s tricky with invasive species because most invasive plants are introduced as garden ornamentals and it takes a long time for us to figure out that a species is invasive.”
Bradley said that historically, the most obvious invasive species in the region of western and central Massachusetts is bittersweet, which is a vine that is native to China, Korea and Japan. It was introduced to the United States in the late 19th century and gained popularity as a garden ornamental in the mid-20th century, according to Bradley.
“If you’re driving along the highway right now or driving along the rivers, and you look up at the trees … you end up seeing just a drapery of vines hanging off them,” Bradley said. “[Bittersweet] is one that was deliberately introduced as an ornamental vine. … People have made wreaths out of them, still make wreaths out of them. … [It] was very popular in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.”
Bradley received her master’s degree and doctorate from Brown University, where she studied geological science. Her background is in geography and her research is focused on spatial analysis. Geographers think a lot about the area in which invasive species are thriving and the climate they exist in, Bradley said, and that information can help researchers learn more about the climate tolerance of a specific species.
One thing that homeowners can do to combat the growth of invasive species is to plant native species in their gardens, she said.
Bradley leads the Northeast Regional Invasive Species & Climate Change Management Network, and she said the organization introduced a website with a tool called Climate-Smart Plant Selection. The tool allows people to enter their state, their desired site and the plant characteristics. The tool will then recommend a plant that is both available and a best match for the criteria entered. It will also give a match score, from 0% to 100%, with the better matches having a higher percentage.
“We’ve put a bunch of time into developing a database and a web tool for homeowners, gardeners, to identify native plants that are likely to persist with climate change,” she said, “and that we know from other surveys are actually available in the ornamental plant trade.”
Bradley is the first speaker announced in this year’s Charlemont Forum speaker series. These lectures and presentations have been taking place since 2010.
