NARSEC Home Page
NARSEC - the North American Network for Remote Sensing Park
Ecosystem Condition - is a loosely organized group to promote and
facilitate the use of remotely sensed imagery for monitoring and
managing National Parks and other protected areas. The group
self-organized at a recent meeting, co-organized by two US agencies
and three Canadian agencies, where we discussed ways to better use remotely sensed data to support
management of National Parks in the United States and Canada.
The US National Park Service (NPS) and Parks Canada Agency (PCA)
are charged with protecting and restoring ecological values in a
diverse array of protected areas from Samoa to far north of the arctic circle. Both agencies understand
that our success in meeting management objectives is directly
related to landscape dynamics in and around the protected areas we
manage, and that some combination of remote sensing/earth
observation (RS/EO) data is needed to monitor and report on
landscape change in the context of the health of protected areas. PCA is supported in its RS/EO initiatives by the Canadian Space
Agency (CSA) and the Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS), and
the NPS by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Given this clear overlap in agency mandates and management
challenges, NARSEC seeks to provide a form for sharing our
experiences, for identifying fruitful areas for collaboration, and to
generally facilitate communication among interested parties.
Planning for the next meeting is underway!
We expect to hold our next joint meeting the first week of March, 2007. At this meeting, we will evaluate progress to date, and work toward adoption of corrdinated monitoring across agency and international boundaries. Both Parks Canada and the U.S. National Park Service have developed and begun implementation of tested and rapidly maturing monitoring protocols. In addition, developments to establish a National Phenological Network offer new partnering opportunities. The organizing committee is established and we will post updates to this site.
For related information, click here to view the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program landscape dynamics web site.
22 September 2006
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