Vital Signs Monitoring

Knowing the condition of natural resources in national parks is fundamental to the National Park Service’s ability to manage park resources. National Park managers across the country are confronted with increasingly complex and challenging issues that require a broad-based understanding of the status and trends of park resources as a basis for making decisions, working with other agencies, and communicating with the public to protect park natural systems and native species. Vital signs monitoring is a key component in the Service’s strategy to provide scientific data and information needed for management decision-making and education. Vital signs also contributes information needed to understand and to measure performance regarding the condition of watersheds, landscapes, and marine resources, and biological communities.

Park vital signs are selected physical, chemical, and biological elements and processes of park
ecosystems that represent the overall health or condition of the park, known or hypothesized effects of stressors, or elements that have important human values. Monitoring data help to define the normal limits of natural variation in park resources and provide a basis for understanding observed changes and possible management connections. Understanding the dynamic nature of park ecosystems and the consequences of human activities is essential for management decision-making aimed to maintain, enhance, or restore the ecological integrity of park ecosystems and to avoid, minimize, or mitigate ecological threats to these systems.

The intent of park vital signs monitoring is to track a subset of physical, chemical, and biological elements and processes of park ecosystems that are selected to represent the overall health or condition of park resources, known or hypothesized effects of stressors, or elements that have important human values. The elements and processes that are monitored are a subset of the total suite of natural resources that park managers are directed to preserve "unimpaired for future generations," including water, air, geological resources, plants and animals, and the various ecological, biological, and physical processes that act on those resources. In situations where natural areas have been so highly altered that physical and biological processes no longer operate (e.g., control of fires and floods in developed areas), information obtained through monitoring can help managers understand how to develop the most effective approach to restoration or, in cases where restoration is impossible, ecologically sound management. The broad-based, scientifically sound information obtained through natural resource monitoring will have multiple applications for management decision-making, research, education, and promoting public understanding of park resources.

National Vital Signs Monitoring Page