Proceedings of the 2023 Mississippi Water Resources Conference

Year: 2023 Authors: Kappaui J., Turnage G.

Aquatic invasive plants (ANS) can negatively affect water chemistry, disrupt ecological processes, lower biodiversity, and impact human uses of water resources. Because of their ability to rapidly colonize new habitat, many states and the federal government have placed invasive aquatic plants on noxious weed lists with the aim of reducing their spread. The states of the southeastern U.S. (TX, LA, MS, AL, FL, GA, SC, TN, AR, and KY) have dozens of invasive aquatic plants but only a few are listed as noxious weeds. Many states have varying definitions and classes of noxious weeds thus complicating efforts to control the spread of these species across state lines. This project aims to describe and combine the current legislation regarding noxious weeds in each state of the southeastern U.S. into a factsheet in an effort to provide resource managers and stakeholders a common resource to help slow the spread of these problematic species.