Monitoring Programs and General Reference
Natural Resource Publications Management Report Series Guidlines
NPS Natural Resource Bibliography (NatureBib).
Access bibliographic interface that should be used to enter and maintain all reference databases. The NPS agency-wide database (which will likely contain > 2,000,000 records) is not yet available to the public. Use the Access interface to catalog reports, publications, maps, and all other relevant reference material to ensure compatibility into the future. http://www.nature.nps.gov/nrbib/index.cfm
Montreal Process - criteria for ranking elements. An internationally endorsed, comprehensive set of criteria and indicators for forest conservation and sustainable management for use by policy-makers. This site presents these criteria and indicators,
together with the statement of endorsement known as the "Santiago Declaration". http://mpci.org/criteria_e.html
USDA Forest Service Local Unit Criteria & Indicators Development Project (LUCID). Huge project to develop indicators, tested on 8 National forests. The final report (downloadable) includes a detailed review of background information on indicators, scale issues, and the application of a systems approach. See for use of NetWeaver for modeling. http://www.fs.fed.us/institute/lucid/
USDA Forest Health
Monitoring (FHM) and Forest
Inventory Analysis (FIA). Large US Forest Service programs with similar goals to NPS I&M
Program. Handbooks on background, methods, and initial results. http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/fhm/ and http://fia.fs.fed.us/
USDA Forest Service Vertebrates Monitoring Progams. Program to develop and implement protocols for monitoring vertebrates and their habitats at the ecoregional scale. Draft protocols, supporting documents. http://www.fs.fed.us/research/monitoring_vertebrate.html
Government of
British Columbia, Resource Information Standards Committee. Many documents on monitoring, data quality assurance, (see especially the Vegetation link), mapping, and change monitoring. http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/risc/index.htm
Channel Islands NP monitoring site. http://www.nature.nps.gov/im/units/chis/
Denali NP Monitoring site. http://www.absc.usgs.gov/research/Denali_USGS/research.htm
Canadian EMAN (Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network) Protocols. http://www.eman-rese.ca/eman/ecotools/intro.html
British
Columbia Species Inventory Project. The BC government has spent $4-5 Million developing standardized
inventory and monitoring methods for birds, mammals, and herptiles, as well as general guidance for sampling vertebrate populations. Approximately 37 detailed manuals are available in .pdf or other format for downloading from their website. See especially the manual "Species Inventory Fundamentals". http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/risc/o_docs.htm
and the BC Conservation Data
Center (CDC), a part of NatureServe http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/cdc/
US Environmental Protection
Agency, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP). The EMAP program is probably the largest single monitoring program in the US. Documentation on the program and links to other associated resources and programs.
http://www.epa.gov/emap/
EMAP
concise summary of 15 nation and regional surveys of biotic and abiotic resources in the US (e.g., BBS, water, air, NRI, etc.) http://www.epa.gov/monitor/programs/index2.html
Additional links
to ecological monitoring sites from the EMAP site. http://www.epa.gov/emap/html/olinks.html
The Nature
Conservancy Conservation Networks. Groups of 15-35 properties in networks to facilitate management
for conservation. http://tnc-ecomanagement.org/About/
National Parks Conservation Association. State of the Parks Program - ratings of 10 or so parks (Oct. 2003). http://www.npca.org/across_the_nation/park_pulse/
Land Use, Land Cover Change, and Remote Sensing
More comprehensive list of sites on remote sensing, land Cover and land Use. http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/monitor/lulc/LULC.htm
USGS National Map home page http://www.nationalmap.usgs.gov/
NASA's Land Cover and Land Use Change Program. http://lcluc.umd.edu/
IGBP Land Use and Land Cover Change component . Mostly large scale. Great links to data sources. http://www.geo.ucl.ac.be/LUCC/lucc.html
US Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Deals extensively with LULC change (especially chpts 8, 10).
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/stratplan2003/
USGS Land Use History of North America Project. http://biology.usgs.gov/luhna/program.html
Mapping Plants and Animals
USGS-NPS Vegetation
Mapping Program. Includes protocols for sampling vegetation. http://biology.usgs.gov/npsveg/
National GAP Program. Maps, lists, references, data, and links. http://www.gap.uidaho.edu/
SpeciesLists/Taxonomy
Integrated
Taxonomic Information System (ITIS). http://www.itis.usda.gov/plantproj/itis/
NPSpecies. Master data management system for species in National Parks.
http://www.nature.nps.gov/im/apps/npspp/
Species 2000.
An effort to enumerate all known species on Earth. Links to other pages with taxonomic information.
http://www.sp2000.org/
Aquatic Resources (Freshwater and Marine)
USGS NAWQA Aquatic Protocols. Widely-used protocols for monitoring stream fish, benthic
invertebrates, and stream habitat. http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/protocols/doc_list.html
EPA, aquatic
components. Indicators and sampling methods for aquatic environments may be particularly useful to parks. Very comprehensive; perhaps begin with the Site map. http://www.epa.gov/nheerl/arm/sitemap.htm
Links to monitoring aquatic macroinvertebrates and other aquatic components. http://www.epa.gov/earth1r6/6wq/ecopro/watershd/monitrng/tools/bio_refs.htm
USGS
National Water Quality Assessment. Extensive documentation on methods and protocols for monitoring
water, stream fish, benthic invertebrates, other biota and habitats. http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/protocols/doc_list.html
SeagrassNet. Protocols and software tools for seagrass habitats. http://www.seagrassnet.org/allabout.htm
Statistical Methods and Resources
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center software archive. Statistical software useful for monitoring and research, especially for wildlife. http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/software.html
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. Monitoring home. http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/monitoring/
USFS Plot-GEM Software. Software to estimate and visually display sample size needs for forest plots. Can be used when many kinds of data are collected at the same location. http://www.fs.fed.us/institute/Plot-GEM/
Program Distance - measuring population density. http://www.ruwpa.st-and.ac.uk/distance/
PATN
- Pattern Analysis. PATN is a program for evaluating and displaying patterns in multivariate data. Suitable for all sorts of data and most commonly used to analyze plant community data. http://www.cse.csiro.au/client_serv/software/patn.htm
Ordination
Methods for Ecologists. University of Oklahoma Ecology. Excellent explanations and reviews of ordination techniques. http://www.okstate.edu/artsci/botany/ordinate/
Data Quality/Assurance, and Management
Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) Metadata working group. An outstanding source of information from a group of data managers
that have been confronting ecological and biophysical data management and archiving needs. http://caplter.asu.edu/home/data/index.jsp
NBII
(National Biological Information Infrastructure). Comprehensive source of information about the national effort to document biological data, including standards. http://www.nbii.gov/datainfo/metadata/standards/
Federal Geographic Data
Committee (FGDC). Metadata standards for geospatial data. Current tools for geospatial metadata. These need to be refined to fully accommodate the needs for ecological information. http://www.fgdc.gov/index.html
STORET- EPA.
STORET and the Legacy Data Center (LDC) are EPA's data management systems containing water quality information. Has links to other sites with information on water or watershed management. http://www.epa.gov/storet/
NPS MetaData Tools. Extension for ArcGIS 8.x
http://www.nature.nps.gov/im/units/mwr/gis/metadata/metadata_tools.htm
Government
of British Columbia, Resource Information Standards Committee. Many documents data quality assurance that can be downloaded. See especially the Terrestrial - Vegetation link. http://srmwww.gov.bc.ca/risc/standards.htm
Setting Priorities
Natural
Heritage Program. Home page for programs and data, including links to programs in all 50 states. You'll need to personally contact a specific office to obtain the ranking criteria and scores. http://www.natureserve.org/aboutUs/nhpeli.jsp
Description
of the ranking score interpretation.. http://www.cnhp.colostate.edu/heritage.html
Analytic Hierarchy Process.. A method used by several parks for setting priorities and documenting the decision process; an alternative to the BOGSAT decision process (bunch of guys/gals sitting around a table).
http://www.srs4702.forprod.vt.edu/cgi-bin/pre_pdf.stm?../pubsubj/pdf/00t1.pdf
Conceptual Ecosystem Modeling
NPS Monitoring Program Conceptual Modeling page. http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/monitor/conceptual_models.htm
Indicators
The Heinz Center - The State of the Nation's Ecosystems. The Heinz Center report (2002, 2007 in progress). See the report summary for a very well considered suite of indicators. Useful workgroup reports on invasive species and fragmention (landscape-scale issues). Report and summary (36 pp) can be downloaded. http://www.heinzctr.org/ecosystems/index.htm
Grazing Lands Technology Institute Technical Publications. Several very useful publications, especially for western rangelands. Publications on soil crusts, state and transitions models, and rangeland indicators are particularly relevant to understanding rangeland ecosystems and developing conceptual models. http://www.glti.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/publications/index.html#range-health-indicate
Landscape function analysis (LFA). David Tongway's general process for evaluating landscape leakiness. Originally developed for grazed lands, but now modified for ecosystems as diverse as southwestern deserts, savannas, rainforests, and tropical grasslands. The methods are widely used in reclamation and grazing-land studies. The Grazier's manual (a 9.5 MB download) provides a clear, well-illustrated description of the methods and analyses. The concept of landscape leakiness is fundamental to ecosystem ecology that should be familiar to all ecosystem managers and ecologists. http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/Program3/efa/
Ecosystem report cards
Chesapeake Bay, Maryland/Virginia. http://www.chesapeakebay.net/pubs/Snapc2k.pdf
Morteon Bay, Australia. http://www.ehmp.org/ehmp/publications.html#reportcards.
