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Recording: Understanding the Proliferation of Vines Throughout the Southeast and Caribbean Requires a Multi-Perspective, Multi-Scale Integrative Approach

January 29, 2026

Rewatch the webinar from Carla Restrepo (University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras) and Mona Papes (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) detailing their ongoing work on invasive vines as part of their Predicting Invasive Vine Spread in the Southeast Using Remote Sensing and Species Distribution Models project.

Abstract:

Climbing plants are proliferating in many parts of the southeastern United States, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, impacting people and institutions in different ways. Throughout this complex and diverse region, the proliferation of climbing plants may be driving large- scale shifts across natural and human-dominated landscapes suggesting similar causes, consequences, and challenges. This contrasts with the fragmented nature of the existing research, management, storytelling (geography, stakeholders, species), and experiences. To defragment existing knowledge, we designed a multi-perspective and multi-scale integrative approach that involves species distribution modeling, analyses of hyperspectral images, and conversations with diverse stakeholders. During this talk we will provide an overall view of our approach and subsequently focus on the species distribution modeling and analyses of hyperspectral images components of our work, and how they can be integrated to better understand the proliferation of climbing plants.

Speakers:

Carla Restrepo

Carla Restrepo is a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras campus where she has developed a research program in tropical large-scale ecology.
Central to her work is understanding how space influences the distribution of organisms and their traits, and in turn how organisms shape the environment. This has taken her over years to focus on two processes, namely landsliding and plant invasions, which she has studied in Puerto Rico, Guatemala, and Colombia where she grew up.

Mona Papes

Mona Papes studies biodiversity patterns at multiple scales. Papes is professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where she combines field research, high-tech tools to address conservation questions at organismal and ecosystem levels.