Interactions between climate change and invasive species are projected to affect aquatic ecosystems, ecosystem services, imperiled species, the invasion process, and a wide-range of management activities. These changes create long-term challenges for the patch work of policies, information systems, and management approaches currently used to detect, control, and eradicate aquatic invasive species (AIS). Climate change may accelerate on-going changes, renewing the imperative to develop an integrated AIS management system – a modern infrastructure including policies, people, and technology. A review of AIS management plans highlights current gaps and existing capacity to adapt management in anticipation of changing conditions. Activities outlined in these management plans represent many components of an AIS management infrastructure. Comparing these components to the well-established public health infrastructure provides a roadmap for how prevention and adaptation activities can be strengthened.

Results/Conclusions

Many existing AIS management plans do not explicitly consider the effects of climate change on target species, ecosystems, or management activities. However, these management plans have a high adaptive capacity to incorporate this kind of information. Activities associated with monitoring have the highest adaptive capacity to include information on changing conditions, and future revisions to management plans are likely the simplest avenue through which to address climate-change effects on AIS management activities. Beyond management plans, an AIS management infrastructure needs to function in a dynamic world, be resilient to changing conditions and be capable of responding to future challenges. The components of this infrastructure exist today, but are not integrated and coordinated in an effective manner. Based on a comparison with the public health infrastructure, these components include legal authority to act, funding sources, a workforce, organization capacity, information systems, knowledge management, and research. A breakdown of these components into prevention and adaptation activities in the context of climate change provides a path for an AIS management infrastructure.