Thank you for your interest in volunteering for IPANE!

In 2001 IPANE (Invasive Plant Atlas for New England) was awarded a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture to track the distribution and spread of over 100 invasive plant species throughout New England. Volunteers are the key to obtaining the information for the atlas. They are trained to identify invasive plants and document their current range. Trainings occur in the spring and summer at a series of workshops held in each New England state. A training session takes a full day and includes an indoor informational session using slides, herbarium sheets, and other prepared materials, and an outdoor session consisting of field visits to local sites where infestations of invasive species occur. At the end of each session volunteers are assigned areas to survey according to their place of residence.

Information collected by volunteers is entered into the IPANE database. The IPANE data are posted on a website and are used for early detection of invasive species, research, and decision making on how to control invasive species.

If you are interested in volunteering for IPANE please contact ipane@uconn.edu

A volunteer application form can also be downloaded here in either MSWord or Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format. To open the Adobe Acrobat file you will need to have installed the free Adobe Acrobat reader which can be downloaded at the Adobe site. If you have any trouble downloading and using these files, please contact ipane@uconn.edu.