Timeline shows Koster's curse spread

Koster's curse was first noted by Mareeba Shire Council officer Sid Clayton in 2001 when he "got a bad feeling" observing the new and unfamiliar melastome. After positive identification by the biosecurity team, the process of mapping and controlling the infestation began.

The animation shown below is not an attempt to show how the plant actually spread: there is no way to know which plants cam first and which came second. The data as collected simply shows when a plant was discovered by the crew, not when the plant was seeded.

To give some sense of how the weed may have spread, all occurrences were banded by year, starting from the epicentre of the incursion. This spot is known with reasonable certainty, so concentric rings were used to group all occurrences by radial distance from the epicentre.

The actual spread pattern was no doubt very different since dispersal is driven by birds, overland water flow, and mechanical means (eg, hitching a ride on boots, fur, etc).

Open Data

The KML file below has been modified to include the radial timeband value in format that will allow it to be played back in GoogleEarth or similar GIS software.