Alien Futures is a new research project collecting and examining issues that may affect the future global and local management of biological invasions. Horizon scanning is the systematic examination of future potential threats, opportunities and likely future developments.  Some horizon scanning activities have already been undertaken about invasive species, for example focusing on high risk species (e.g. Roy et al. 2014), specific habitats (Ojaveer et al. 2014), or general issues within European invasion science (e.g. Caffrey et al. 2014).

This project aims to complement these existing activities by exploring the wider environmental, social and technological issues external to invasion ecology that may have implications for the future management of invasive species. During the first phase of the project, we are gathering opinions on the global and local issues that might affect the management of biological invasions in the next 20 – 50 years. We want to explore issues that may emerge and have implications in a more distant future than currently considered in the management of biological invasions. These can be issues which might have positive or negative implications.

We invite people working with or interested in biological invasions to fill in a survey on our website. To find out more, and fill in the survey, please visit www.alienfutures.org. We encourage you to think creatively beyond the time frame of your current work!

We would also be very grateful if you could forward this email to colleagues or groups who may be interested in contributing.  Please copy in info@alienfutures.org.

The survey also includes some questions about your background and your interest in biological invasions.  It does not gather personally identifiable information unless you provide us with an email address in order to hear about project outputs.  All of the issues identified will be published online in an open-access format, so please do not include any details that you would not wish to be published.

Project outputs will include a long list of global issues, a long list of local issues and a shortlist of global issues. We will make the data available for use and further research, with workshops planned to explore the implications of these issues for policy and management.

You can follow the progress of the project on our website www.alienfutures.org or follow us on Twitter @alienfutures  #alienfutures.