Monitoring is a central component of natural resource stewardship in the National Park Service, and in conjunction with natural resource inventories and research, provides the information needed for effective, science-based managerial decision-making and resource protection. The NPS strategy to institutionalize inventory and monitoring throughout the agency is based on a framework consisting of three major components; (1) completion of 12 basic resource inventories upon which monitoring efforts can be based, (2) a network of 11 experimental or “prototype” long-term ecological monitoring (LTEM) programs initiated in 1992 to evaluate alternative monitoring designs and strategies, and (3) implementation of operational monitoring of critical parameters (i.e. "vital signs") in 270 parks with significant natural resources that have been grouped into 32 networks linked by geography and shared natural resource characteristics.

Servicewide Goals for Vital Signs Monitoring for the National Park Service are as follows:

	Determine status and trends in selected indicators of the condition of park ecosystems to allow managers to make better-informed decisions and to work more effectively with other agencies and individuals for the benefit of park resources;
	Provide early warning of abnormal conditions and impairment of selected resources to help develop effective mitigation measures and reduce costs of management;
	Provide data to better understand the dynamic nature and condition of park ecosystems and to provide reference points for comparisons with other, altered environments;
	Provide data to meet certain legal and Congressional mandates related to natural resource protection and visitor enjoyment;
	Provide a means of measuring progress towards performance goals.

The goals of data management are to provide accurate, efficient, and effective information and support for resource management and protection. Park managers, cooperators, and other data users need to know what data are available from the network, where it is stored, the quality, timeliness, and uses of the data, how to incorporate this data into resource management decisions, and how the data will be managed over time.

The objective of the NPS Inventory& Monitoring Program is to provide scientifically and statistically sound data for resource management, and to ensure that quality data is available for this task. These objectives establish a need:

	To develop metadata for all significant spatial and non-spatial data.
	To ensure very high quality for all significant data.
	To develop and maintain all essential data.
	To ensure that data are logically organized and retrievable by staff, cooperators, and the public.
	To ensure long term integrity of digital data and associated metadata through good archival storage standards and practices.
	To identify sensitive data and protect it from unauthorized access and inappropriate use.
	To optimize data sharing, development, and analyses.
	To ensure that all network held digital and non-digital information (i.e. data sheets, documents, published and unpublished reports, manuscripts, photographs, maps, etc.) are archived and protected in accordance with recognized archival standards.

Monitoring the Condition of Natural Resources in US National Parks [PDF]