The interactive invasive plants dashboard visualises changes to invasive plant distribution over space and time, and for selected regions across Queensland.
It is designed to help regional-scale biosecurity planning.
About the dashboard
This dashboard displays known distribution information and climate suitability for around 100 restricted and emerging invasive plants across Queensland.
You can find out:
- what restricted and emerging plants occur in your region
- where these plants occurred in the past
- where they are now
- where they can potentially spread in the future.
Restricted species are listed under the Queensland Biosecurity Act 2014 (the Act), whilst the emerging species list is based on pest risk assessments undertaken by this department. Some emerging species are listed as prohibited matter under the Act.
How to use the dashboard
You can use the dashboard to visualise the spread of restricted and emerging plant species in Queensland, and is especially useful for local government biosecurity planning.
You can:
- select an invasive plant species
- select a Queensland council region
- interact with the dashboard to see ‘what’ is located ‘where’ and ‘when’.
Watch this short video about the invasive plants dashboard.
About the data
The dashboard draws data from 3 data sets and collectively, they reflect historical, current and potential weed distribution across Queensland.
Read more about how the datasets were developed.
Herbarium dataset
The Australian Virtual Herbarium dataset:
- shows the historical locations and spread of the plant species over time
- uses historical records from the Queensland Herbarium that include the date and the location of the sample weed
- doesn’t show current distribution.
Pest distribution survey mapping
The pest distribution survey mapping dataset shows current invasive plant distribution and describes relative abundance.
Climate models
This dataset uses climate models:
- to show the potential spread of the weed species in Queensland based on suitable climate data
- built from different climate models that were developed by the Queensland Government between 2000 and 2023.
The source models used are:
- CLIMEX (developed by CSIRO)
- CLIMATCH (formerly CLIMATE, managed by Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences)
- MAXENT climate models (Osunkoya O.O., Perrett C., Calvert M., Shi B., Csurhes S., & Shabani F. (as yet unpublished).
We will add more models to the dataset as they become available.
Last updated: 31 Jul 2025