Getting Ready to Use WHIPPET

Online WHIPPET pulls data on population locations and population size from Calflora. Users can base their prioritization on data already in Calflora, can upload their own data to Calflora, or can use a combination of the two. You will need a Calflora Contributor account in order to use WHIPPET; register for an account at http://www.calflora.org/entry/mycalflora.html. To upload data from a GIS shapefile or spreadsheet, use http://www.calflora.org/entry/upload.html. Users can choose to make uploaded data public (viewable to anyone) or private (viewable only to that user). Private data can be used in WHIPPET only by the user who uploaded it. It is important to consider up front which species and populations you want to include in your prioritization. The results from WHIPPET will only be as good as the data that are used!

Select whether to use public data from Calflora, unpublished data from your own Calflora account, or both. You must load data into Calflora before using WHIPPET; data cannot be entered into WHIPPET directly. Unpublished data must be in the same account you are using to log into WHIPPET. Be aware that data from Calflora may no longer be accurate.

Choose species from the drop-down list. This list includes species from the Cal-IPC Invasive Plant Inventory. Use Control to select each species.

Selecting an area can be done in four ways: selecting a county, drawing a shape on the map, using the entire area visible on the screen, or uploading a shapefile. An uploaded layer must be a shapefile in polygon or multi-polygon geometry. Polygons will be simplified to half-mile accuracy. If your area has a complex shape or multiple polygons, you may want to select the entire area by drawing a shape rather than uploading a file. We suggest selecting an area or using a shapefile that is slightly larger than your boundaries to ensure that populations on the edge of your site will be included.

This step is optional. The Site Value sub-score and the Roads sub-score are populated with default values. The Roads score is calculated based on the distance from the population to the nearest public road. The Site Value is taken from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Areas of Conservation Emphasis (ACE II). You may want to create a custom Roads layer to include forest or park roads, trails, or levees that are not part of a standard ESRI roads layer. You may want to create a custom Site Value layer based on your priorities, such as locations of sensitive species. Instructions for creating customized layers are in Appendix A: Generating Custom GIS Scoring Data.

Using a Saved Search from Calflora can save time for running multiple WHIPPET runs on a particular combination of species and location.

1. Create a Saved Search in Calfora with multiple species:
   1. Go to Calflora.org, log in to your account, and click "My Calflora" on the left column.
   2. Click "Plant lists" from the menu bar across the top. Click "New List" and fill in the form fields, including adding multiple plant species. The search must include Cal-IPC Inventory species to be used by WHIPPET. Click "Save."
   3. From that same Plant List Definition page, run a search for your plant list by clicking the "Observation Hotline Search" link in the middle of the page.
   4. From the Observation Hotline page, create a polygon of your WHIPPET project area by clicking the "DRAW A POLYGON" dropdown in the middle of the page and follow those instructions. Click "Search."
   5. Copy the URL from the address bar. Click the Calflora homepage link in the upper left corner, click "My Calflora," and then click "Searches." Click "Add another search," give it a name, indicate the use as "WHIPPET" (very important, otherwise WHIPPET won’t recognize the saved search), and paste your copied URL into the "Search URL" field. Click "Save."
2. Bring up a saved search in WHIPPET Online:
   1. In the WHIPPET Run Settings box, click "Load a Calflora Search" and choose your saved search from the options in the dropdown list.
3. For help with Calflora Saved Searches, contact Calflora at spprt@calflora.org.

"Get Records" will display a table of populations matching your selected species and area. Clicking on the row for a population will highlight it yellow and highlight the corresponding population on the map. Click on a population on the map to jump to that row of the table. Values in the table come from Calflora, are calculated based on the location, or are default values that can be adjustable. (See Additional Information for detailed descriptions of each score.)

1. Select Populations to Remove from Analysis WHIPPET will analyze all populations of the selected species in the selected area. Uncheck the box on the right of a row to remove that population. Removing a population means that it will not be part of any calculations. This might be chosen if a user knows that a population listed in Calflora no longer exists. The most important calculation this will influence is the distance to conspecific populations. We recommend including all populations in analysis and adjusting the population list in the final spreadsheet of WHIPPET results.
2. Adjust Site Value Site Value indicates the importance of this location from the perspective of wildlife conservation and is based on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Areas of Conservation Emphasis. Adjust these settings if you know particular areas that are more important to protect. Note: If you uploaded custom Site Values, this step may be skipped.
3. Adjust Accessibility Accessibility refers to how difficult it is to reach a population to treat it. This is a subjective score with a default value of 3 (Moderate). Users can adjust scores based on their knowledge of each location.
4. Adjust Population Size Population size is based on data from Calflora. However, very few Calflora records contain this information so most populations will show a default value of >1-10ac (3). Adding values for population size when uploading your own data to Calflora will greatly increase the value of your WHIPPET results. For other populations, adjust the approximate population size where known.
5. Select whether herbicides are an option This selection asks whether chemical control is a possible option for management. Selecting “yes” does not mean that herbicides will be used, only that they could be used. The selection will apply to all populations and influences the scores for Control Effectiveness and Control Cost. We singled out chemical control from other methods because some agencies or locations do not allow the use of herbicides.

Results are available in two formats: a spreadsheet with the scores and geographic coordinates for each population and a map. Save these files to your computer for future reference. You may save your session and return to it, or run multiple sessions with adjustments in the scores in order to compare the differences of adjusting particular parameters.

The results from your WHIPPET session provide a provisional prioritization based on current objective data at hand. This prioritization should next be reviewed by informed reviewers and collaborators who can inspect the rankings and the information they are based on. The prioritization may be modified based on factors not included expressly in the model, or the WHIPPE T session itself may be modified and run again with adjusted parameters. For transparency and future understanding, changes and their justification should be documented.

The overall priority score for a given population is as objective as possible and provides insight into why a given population was or was not a high priority for eradication. Look at the major criteria scores (Impact, Invasiveness, Feasibility) for further insight. The actual priority score is not as meaningful as its rank relative to the other targeted populations. Some clustering of populations of the same species will occur because the species-level criteria contribute considerable weight to the overall priority score.

Note: If you are relying on Calflora records that are not your own, widespread species may rank artificially high in the results. This will happen because many widespread species (such as annual grasses) are underreported and therefore will show up as isolated populations when they are not.

The pdf map created by WHIPPET is intended as a broad overview. Each priority level on the map represents 25% of the range of total scores. Geographic coordinates in the spreadsheet can be imported into GIS software to create more detailed maps for field crews. If you do not own ArcGIS software, you may want to look into free GIS options for creating maps such as ArcGIS Explorer or Quantum GIS

Here are suggested steps to take with the results:

• Assess your available budget
• Estimate your cost for controlling the highest priority populations. Consider employing Weedsearch™, an online tool developed in Australia, to help estimate costs (http://www-personal.une.edu.au/~ocacho/weedsearch.htm.)
• Choose projects with a commitment to follow through to eradication
• For populations and species that fall just under the borderline, it may be important to focus monitoring to make sure information is accurate and their status is not changing.
• Consider sites that may not be highly ranked, but are in close proximity to or en-route to high-priority sites, thus maximizing staff and resource efficiency.
• Consider populations of other species not included in the analysis, i.e. species not on the Cal-IPC Inventory.
• Consider connections between populations, such as which are upstream or downstream.

This user guide was adapted from G. Darin's user manual for the original version of WHIPPET. The development of the original version of WHIPPET was supported by USDA Forest Service, National Science Foundation, University of California-Davis Department of Plant Sciences, California Department of Food and Agriculture, and California Department of Water Resources. Funding was provided by the USDA Forest Service, Special Technology Development Program; California Landscape Conservation Cooperative; and US Fish and Wildlife Service Inventory and Monitoring Program. A generous ESRI Conservation Grant supports WHIPPET, as well as Cal-IPC’s statewide data collection and suitable range modeling effort.

In accordance with Federal law and US Department of Agriculture policy, Cal-IPC is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.)

To file a complaint of discrimination, write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, Room 326-W, Whitten Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9419 or call (202) 720-5964 (voice and TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

WHIPPET was envisioned by Steve Schoenig while at the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA Integrated Pest Control Branch) in the early 2000s and developed with funding from the US Forest Service's State and Private Forestry Grant by Gina Darin while completing her Master's research at UC Davis from 2006-2008. CDFA needed a systematic tool to help prioritize A-rated weed infestations for eradication by considering characteristics of the target species, as well as their specific locations. Gina Darin's Master's thesis tested WHIPPET's ability to prioritize individual infestations for eradication separately, recognizing that not all infestations of a given weed pose the same threats and feasibility of eradication. The test of the prioritization tool using a sample of CDFA's A-rated weeds showed that by considering spatial, logistical, and biological aspects of individual populations within a species, some populations ranked significantly higher than others in the resulting prioritization due to the combinations of being located in a concentration of rare species occurrences, nearby a vector of spread, and easily accessible.

Whippet Criteria Scores and Weights

Impact:

• Impact to Wildlands – Based on Cal-IPC Inventory, Section 1 (Impacts).
• Site Value – Based on California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Areas of Conservation Emphasis (ACE II), which incorporates species diversity, species rarity, and sensitive habitats into a statewide grid of 2.5 square mile hexagons. We used their ecoregional model.

• Distance to Conspecifics - Based on nearest population of the same species. Minimum distance between populations is 10m.
• Rate of Spread – Based on Cal-IPC Inventory, Section 2 (Invasiveness).
• Distance to Dispersal Vectors (Population scores) – Distance to major vectors for spread of invasive plants. Scored based on the closest vector to that population.
• Roads – Based on ESRI roads data. Includes local as well as major roads. Does not include some nonpublic roads such as on National Forests. Does not include most trails.
• Rivers – Based on National Hydrology Database from the US Geological Survey, 1:24,000 scale.
• Mines - Based on locations of active mines from the Office of Mine Reclamation, California Department of Conservation.

Feasibility of Eradication:

Population Size – Calflora database or entered by user.

Reproductive Ability – Based on Cal-IPC Invasive Plant Inventory, question 2.4.

Detectability – Relative difficulty of seeing a plant of this species. Based on expert knowledge.

Accessibility – Relative difficulty of reaching population. Entered by user. Default is Moderate (3).

Control Effectiveness – Relative effectiveness of control for this species. This score was divided into two options depending on whether a user indicates that chemical control is a management option. Choosing “yes” for chemical control means that it is an option but does not necessarily mean it will be used.

Control Cost – Relative cost of controlling a species. Scored based on expert knowledge and information from DiTomaso et al. 2013 Weed Control in Natural Areas of the Western United States.