The idea was created during GIS capacity building workshops organized by local authorities, NGOs and the Universities of San Francisco de Quito, Salzburg and others, during 2013 and put into a workplan at the first Geocommunity GALAPAGOS workshop in February 2014 at San Cristobal, Galapagos.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Student Project - Guava Distribution Model, Isabela Island


In a class of the MSc Applied Geoinformatics at Salzburg University a group of students, supervised by Dr. Gudrun Wallentin, developed a model based on the topic of the invasive species guava on Isabela Island. Running for three decades, the model covers the timespan from 1980 to 2010. Having the initial guava spread from 1980 the model refers to a real start state and can be compared to the real spread of guava during the last decades. Guava as such was introduced to the Galápagos for cultivation in 1858 into protected areas and human-use zones and today covers more than 40000 ha of land on Isabela Island, mostly within the agricultural zone and the adjacent protected area (Miller et. al. 2010). In 2004 Kerr et al. describe guava plants as one of the greatest threats to the terrestrial ecosystem of the islands.


The goal of the model is to show how birds could be part of the influence of the guava spread on Galápagos Islands. The concept and therefore the model are based on more generic assumptions which make the results highly discussable in the way of usability and reasonability. Nevertheless the model shows the basic behavior of birds and an increase of dispersal of guava seeds due to birds which was the intension.

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