Inventory and Monitoring Workshop
on Landscape Monitoring

January 27-28, 2004,
National Park Service, 1201 Oakridge Drive, Ft. Collins, CO 80525
Contact John Gross at (970) 267-2111 or John_Gross@nps.gov

Workshop Products   - Presentation summaries and presentations.

Workshop handouts - selected materials from packages for participants
Complete set of workshop handouts   combined into one pdf file (2.0 MB)

AGWA and ATtILA Assessment tools - from EPA

AGWA is an Arc interface to hydrological process models that are useful for landscape assessment. Users can run the models and evaluate the relative consequences of different land management options.

AGWA Fact Sheet (4.4 MB)   The fact sheet is a good first intro.
AGWA Brochure (1.3 MB)
AGWA Product Announcement (160 KB)

ATtILA is an Arc interface for conducting landscape-scale assessments. It estimates multiple indices of landscape pattern and condition.
ATtILA incorporates a range of data sources and integrates them for landscape analysis.
ATtILA Fact Sheet (250 KB)

Logistics

View information on accommodations and transportation for registered participants.  
Download info in MS-Word format.
Draft agenda  
Workshop participants  
Participant arrival / departures (for rental cars)   

Objectives

The main objectives of the workshop are to identify a useful conceptual/theoretical framework that is broadly applicable to terrestrial lands, and to clarify the key issues that a monitoring program should address. Hopefully, we will develop a preliminary list of potential indicators, data needs and availability, and research/development needs. This information will inform current collaborators and guide future efforts. An important task is to identify and agree to a conceptual or theoretical framework that can structure further work. This framework may require some development to provide guidance that will help us address questions such as:

• What information best describes the state of the landscape (e.g., system extent, patch size, etc.)?
• When is pattern important, at what scale(s), and why? I.e., does area alone tell us all we need to know?
• What causes or constitutes a "pattern"? Is the patch or matrix most important?
• How can we best measure pattern?
• What are reasonable and realistic monitoring goals at landscape scales?

We will need to consider pattern-causing agents (agriculture, housing, roads, fences, forestry, large-scale disturbances, etc) and the effects and importance of these agents in different systems. How can these be measured, and how can we best use different kinds of data in a creative and meaningful way to meet monitoring goals? Can we identify an "edge"?

To identify broad approaches, I think it will be useful to identify ecosystems, or sets of ecosystems, where landscape processes have similar effects. The Heinz Center used 6 ecosystem types: coasts & oceans, forests, farmlands, fresh waters, grasslands/shrublands, and urban/suburban. Is there a more appropriate set of ecosystem types for our purposes? Can we identify sets of parks or networks that share important attributes and needs for monitoring at the landscape level?

NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program Information

Download: Narrative Summary of I&M and Relevant NPS Activities Using of Remotely Sensed (RS) Data  MS-Word. 160 KB.
View or Download Summary table of Current I&M Landscape/RS Projects.
Map of I&M Networks View / download color map.
Download Woodward 2002.   Use of remote sensing for long-term ecological monitoring in the North Coast and Cascades Network: Summary of a Workshop. Pdf format, 576 KB.

Remote sensing acronyms and data summary

Acronyms commonly used by the RS community.  
Download Table of RS data sources and characteristics.   MS Word format, 93 KB.

Case studies

Download Hansen and Gryskiewicz 2003.   Final report on land use change for HTLN. Very good conceptual framework for evaluating land use/cover change and impacts on preserve areas. Tables 1 & 3 are valuable for linking LULC to ecological processes and for identifying sources of data. Zipped MS-Word, 830 KB.
Roundtable on Sustainable Forests   This is a key group, endorsed by USFS, focused on developing criteria and indicators. See their "Background Information and Links" page for links to other roundtables.
Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable   This roundtable has about 100 participants, and they have produced a very comprehensive report on indicators for soil, water, animals, etc. in rangelands.

Roads

Ercelawn,A. 1999. End of the road. NRDC, online (199 pages in printed form). This is an outstanding review of the impacts of roads on systems and wildlife.
Forman, R.T.T. and L.E. Alexander. 1998. Roads and their major ecological effects. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 29:207-231. 2.2 MB.
Hawbaker, T. J. and V. C. Radeloff. 2004. Roads and landscape pattern in northern Wisconsin based on a comparison of four road data sources. Conservation Biology 18:1233-1244. 620 KM.
Heilman Jr., G. E., J. R. Strittholt, N. C. Slosser, and D. A. Dellasala. 2002. Forest fragmentation of the conterminous United States: Assessing forest intactness through road density and spatial characteristics. BioScience 52:411-422. (large file - 8 MB)
Lugo, A.E. and H.Gucinski. 2000. Function, effects, and management of forest roads. Forest Ecology and Management 133:249-262. 1.0 MB.  
Riitters, K.H. and J.D. Wickham. 2003. How far to the nearest road? Frontiers in Ecology and Environment 1:125-129. (color, 2.5 MB)
Trombulak, S.C. and C.A. Frissell. 2000. Review of ecological effects of roads on terrestrial and aquatic communities. Conservation Biology 14:18-30. 1.5 MB

Indices

Cullinan, V.I. and J.M. Thomas. 1992. A comparison of quantitative methods for examining landscape pattern and scale. Landscape Ecology 7:211-227.
Gustafson, E.J. 1998. Quantifying landscape spatial pattern: What is the state of the art? Ecosystems 1:143-156.
Ludwig, J. A., R. W. Eager, G. N. Bastin, V. H. Chewings, and A. C. Liedloff. 2002. A leakiness index for assessing landscape function using remote sensing. Landscape Ecology 17:157-171.
Opdam, P., J. Verboom, and R. Pouwels. 2003. Landscape cohesion: an index for the conservation potential of landscapes for biodiversity. Landscape Ecology 18:113-126. 940 KB
Turner, M.G. 1990. Spatial and temporal analysis of landscape patterns. Landscape Ecology 4:21-30.
Vos, C.C., J. Verboom, P.F.M. Opdam, and C.J.F. Ter Braak. 2001. Toward ecologically scaled landscape indices. American Naturalist 183:24-41. 226 KB

Disturbance

Turner, M.G., W.H. Romme, R.H. Gardner, R.V. O'Neill, and T.K. Kratz. 1993. A revised concept of landscape equilibrium: disturbance and stability on scaled landscapes . Landscape Ecology 8:213-227.
White, P. S., J. Harrod, W. H. Romme, and J. Betancourt. 1999. Disturbance and temporal dynamics. Pages 566-584 in: W. T. Sexton, A. J. Malk, R. C. Szaro, and N. C. Johnson. Ecological stewardship: A common reference for ecosystem management, vol. II. Elsevier Science, Ltd., Oxford, UK. (Large file - 3.1 MB).
White, P. S. and A. Jentsch. 2001. The search for generality in studies of disturbance and ecosystem dynamics. Progress in Botany 62:399-449. (Large file - 2.5 MB).

Ecological Boundaries and Edges

Cadenasso, M. L., et al. 2003   . An interdisciplinary and synthetic approach to ecological boundaries. Bioscience 53:717-722.
Cadenasso, M. L., et al. 2003. A framework for a theory of ecological boundaries. Bioscience 53:750-758.
Strayer, D. L., et al. 2003. A classification of ecological boundaries. Bioscience 53:723-729.

Fragmentation

Bissonette, J.A. and I. Storch. 2002.  Fragmentation: Is the message clear? Conservation Ecology 6:[online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol6/iss2/art14.
Responses to Bissonette and Storch: Boagaert 2003 and Bissonette and Storch 2003
Harrison, S. and E. Bruna. 1999. Habitat fragmentation and large-scale conservation: what do we know for sure? Ecography 22:225-232.
McGarigal, K. and S.A. Cushman. 2002. Comparative evaluation of experimental approaches to the study of habitat fragmentation effects. Ecological Applications 12:335-345. 120 KB.
Riitters, K. H., J. D. Wickham, R. V. O'Neill, B.K. Jones, E.R. Smith, J.W. Coulston, T.G. Wade, and J.H. Smith. 2002. Fragmentation of continental United States forests. Ecosystems 5:815-822. External link; 355 K or 1.4 MB.
Kurt Riitters publications page  to see and/or download related papers

Freshwater Resources

Gergel, S.E., M.G. Turner, J. . Miller, J.M. Melack, and E.H. Stanley. 2002. Landscape indicators of human impacts to riverine systems. Aquatic Sciences 64:118-128.
Griffith, J.A. 2002. Geographic techniques and recent applications of remote sensing to landscape-water quality studies. Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 138:181-197.
Jones, K. B., A. C. Neale, M. S. Nash, R. D. VanRemortel, J. D. Wickham, K. H. Riitters, and R. V. O'Neill. 2001. Predicting nutrient and sediment loadings to streams from landscape metrics: A multiple watershed study from the United States mid-Atlantic region. Landscape Ecology 16:301-312.
Wiens, J. A. 2002. Riverine landscapes: Taking landscape ecology into the water. Freshwater Biology 47:501-515.

Other references

Papers below provide important background information, include interesting applications, are particularly insightful, or they're frequently cited.

Dale, V.H., S. Brown, R.A. Haeuber, N.T. Hobbs, N. Huntly, R.J. Naiman, W.E. Riebsame, M.G. Turner, and T. J. Valone. 2000. Ecological principles and guidelines for managing the use of land. Ecological Applications 10:639-670. 2.1 MB
Flather, C. and J.R. Sauer. 1996. Using landscape ecology to test hypotheses about large-scale abundance patterns in migratory birds. Ecology 77:28-35.
Foster, D., F. Swanson, J. Aber, I. Burke, N. Brokaw, D. Tilman, and A. Knapp. 2003. The importance of land-use legacies to ecology and conservation. BioScience 53:77-88.
Gustafson, E. J. 1998. Quantifying landscape spatial pattern: What is the state of the art? Ecosystems 1:143-156.
Hansen, A.J. and D. Gryskiewicz. 2003. Interactions between Heartland National Parks and surrounding land use change: Development of conceptual models and indicators for monitoring. Unpublished report. 72 pages. 830 K, zipped.
Hansen, A.J., R. Rasker, B. Maxwell, J.J. Rotella, J.D. Johnson, A.W. Parmenter, L. Langner, W.B. Cohen, R.L. Lawrence, and M.P.V. Kraska. 2002. Ecological causes and consequences of demographic change in the new west. BioScience 52:151-162. External link.
Hansen, A.J. and J.J. Rotella. 2002. Biophysical factors, land use, and species viability in and around nature reserves. Conservation Biology 16:1112-1122. External link.
Andy Hansen's publications page   - view or download related papers.
Kepner, W.G., C.J. Watts, C.M. Edmonds, J.K. Maingi, S.E. Marsh, and G. Luna. 2000. A landscape approach for detecting and evaluating change in a semi-arid environment. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 64:179-195.
Landres, P.B., P. Morgan, and F.J. Swanson. 1999. Overview of the use of natural variability concepts in managing ecological systems. Ecological Applications 9:1179-1188. 90 KB.
Levin, S. A. 1992. The problem of pattern and scale in ecology. Ecology 73:1943-1967. 4.6 MB.
McConnell, W.J. and E.F. Moran. 2000. Meeting in the middle: The challenge of meso-level integration. LUCC Report Series No. 5 University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana. LUCC Report Series No. 5. 56 pages. 173 KB.
Turner, M. G. 1989. Landscape ecology: the effect of pattern on process. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 20:171-197.
Turner, M. G., S. M. Pearson, P. Bolstad, and D. N. Wear. 2003. Effects of land -cover on spatial pattern of forest communities in the Southern Appalachian Mountains (USA). Landscape Ecology 18:449-464.
Urban, D. L. 2002. Tactical monitoring of landscapes. Pages 294-311 in: J. Liu and W. W. Taylor. Integrating landscape ecology into natural resource management. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Wang, Y. and D.K. Moskovits. 2001. Tracking fragmentation of natural communities and changes in land cover: Applications of Landsat data for conservation in an urban landscape (Chicago wilderness). Conservation Biology 15:835-843. 885 KB
Woodroffe, R. and J.R. Ginsberg. 1998. Edge effects and the extinction of populations inside protected areas. Science 280:2126-2128.


Comments or suggestions? Send to John Gross, Ecologist, I&M Program

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