PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Melodie A. McGeoch
AU  - Eduardo Arlé
AU  - Jonathan Belmaker
AU  - Yehezkel Buba
AU  - David A. Clarke
AU  - Franz Essl
AU  - Emili García-Berthou
AU  - Quentin Groom
AU  - Marie V. Henriksen
AU  - Walter Jetz
AU  - Ingolf Kühn
AU  - Bernd Lenzner
AU  - Carsten Meyer
AU  - Shyama Pagad
AU  - Arman Pili
AU  - Mariona Roigé
AU  - Hanno Seebens
AU  - Reid Tingley
AU  - Joana R. Vicente
AU  - John R.U. Wilson
AU  - Marten Winter
TI  - Policy-relevant indicators for invasive alien species assessment and reporting
AID  - 10.1101/2021.08.26.457851
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.08.26.457851
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/30/2021.08.26.457851.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/30/2021.08.26.457851.full
AB  - Invasive alien species are repeatedly shown to be amongst the top threats to biodiversity globally. Robust indicators for measuring the status and trends of biological invasions are lacking, but essential for monitoring biological invasions and the effectiveness of interventions. Here, we formulate and demonstrate three such indicators that capture the key dimensions of species invasions, each a significant and necessary advance to inform invasive alien species policy targets: 1) Rate of Invasive Alien Species Spread, which provides modelled rates of ongoing introductions of species based on invasion discovery and reporting. 2) Impact Risk, that estimates invasive alien species impacts on the environment in space and time and provides a basis for nationally targeted prioritization of where best to invest in management efforts. 3) Status Information on invasive alien species, that tracks improvement in the essential dimensions of information needed to guide relevant policy and data collection and in support of assessing invasive alien species spread and impact. We show how proximal, model-informed status and trend indicators on invasive alien species can provide more effective global (and national) reporting on biological invasions, and how countries can contribute to supporting these indicators.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.