DOI: 10.5061/dryad.98sf7m0q2
title: Data from: Distribution, drivers, and restoration priorities of plant invasions in India

description: Biological invasions threaten biodiversity and human wellbeing, with
 developing tropical countries being more vulnerable. Despite the urgency
 to reduce impacts of invasions, management interventions are constrained
 by unavailability of timely information on invasive species occurrence,
 potential drivers, and restoration priorities. Generating this information
 at biogeographic scales can be costly, unless integrated with
 multi-objective biodiversity monitoring. Invasive plant monitoring is
 integrated with India’s national-scale tiger population assessment,
 wherein natural areas are sampled at 25 km2 scale to inventory plants. In
 2018, a total of 158,979 plots were sampled covering ~358,550 km2. We used
 206,393 locations of high concern invasive plants to model their
 distribution using socio-ecological covariates and identify potential
 drivers of invasions. Considering the invasion magnitude and financial
 constraints in management, we further identified priority restorations
 sites at national-scale to maximize biodiversity outcomes. High-concern
 invasive plants were recorded from ~254,880 km2 (72% sampled area) and
 modelled to invade in total ~750,905 km2 (66%) Indian natural systems.
 While open and deciduous ecosystems were the highest invaded by woody
 plants, areas with extreme climate and less anthropic pressure were least
 invaded. Since managing invasions across their range seemed futile due to
 costly (~13.5 billion USD for one-time management) and ineffective
 strategies, restoration priority was assigned to least invaded areas (11%
 protected areas, 23% multi-use) to maximize biodiversity returns.
 Synthesis and applications: India implemented national-scale invasive
 plant monitoring by integrating it with the umbrella project on tiger
 assessment. Embarking on this big data, we show that two-thirds of India’s
 natural areas are under multiple plant invasions, owing to the legacy of
 anthropogenic modifications. Our study offers a restoration priority
 model, empowering policymakers to devise adaptive strategies for restoring
 invaded biomes and maximizing biodiversity returns.
description: All the neccesary methods are provided in the paper.
description: \# Dataset title: Distribution\, drivers\, and restoration priorities of
 plant invasions in India \#\# Description of the data and file structure
 The dataset has two files: 1. Presence.xls: This is a spreadsheet with
 34879 records of 11 invasive plants across India, at 25
 km<sup>2</sup>. Every column represent an invasive species.
 The column header abbreviations are: Unique ID: aa Ageratina adenophora,
 ac Ageratum conyzoides, co Chromolaena odorata, hy Mesosphaerum
 suaveolens, lc Lantana camara, mm Mimosa diplotricha, mi Mikania
 micrantha, ph Parthenium hysterophorus, pj Prosopis juliflora, st Senna
 tora, and xs Xanthium strumarium. 2. priority1.shp: This is a shapefile
 representing restoration priority grids of 25 km<sup>2</sup>.
 Every grid is ranked 1, 2 or 3, representing the priority ranks, as
 discussed in the paper. All necessary details pertaining methods and
 meanings of the priority ranks are available in the paper. The grid is
 georeferenced, with WGS 1984 Lambert Conformal Conic projection system.
 \#\# Sharing/Access information All other requests pertaining the data
 must be made at yvjhala@gmail.com