New DFO Project on Managing Invasive-Species Spread in Atlantic Canada

Once a non-indigenous species establishes in coastal waters, the harder problem is often its secondary spread, the slow movement from one region to the next along the coast. Understanding where nature itself slows that spread is key to managing it.

The MAPS Lab has received support from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Bedford, Nova Scotia, for the project “Employing Natural Biogeographic Barriers to Mitigate and Manage the Secondary Spread of Non-Indigenous Species in Atlantic Canada.” The project provides CAD 60,000 to support a Master’s student over two years, running from September 2026 through August 2028, and has received internal approval within DFO.

The work studies how natural biogeographic barriers, the environmental and oceanographic features that separate coastal regions, can be used to anticipate and limit where invasive species travel next. It connects directly to the lab’s research on climate matching and species-risk modeling, extending those methods from where a species could establish to how it moves once it arrives.

By pairing machine learning with the ecology of Atlantic Canada’s coastline, the project aims to give managers a clearer picture of invasion pathways and the places where intervention will matter most. We are grateful to DFO for supporting this work and for the chance to train a student on a problem of real environmental consequence.