Tracking Non-Native Plants with Google Maps

The Environment Agency and the University of Bristol have released a new smartphone application and website to help track invasive non-native plants in the UK.

The Plant Tracker app allows anyone to take and submit geo-located photographs of non-native plants that they find. Each submitted report is then added to that plant species' own Google Map. The Google Maps show the distribution of reports submitted for each plant.

Data collected by the PlantTracker app is also added to the national recording scheme for vascular plants run by the Botanical Society of the British Isles.