Inventory and Monitoring Program
The Gulf Coast Network (GULN) includes eight national parks with significant natural resources. The network's geographic area encompasses the western third of Florida, the southwestern two-thirds of Alabama, all of Mississippi and Louisiana, the southeastern quarter of Texas, and extends up into the Nashville and Memphis areas of Tennessee. The GULN includes two seashores – Gulf Islands National Seashore (GUIS) and Padre Island National Seashore (PAIS), two national preserves – Big Thicket National Preserve (BITH) and Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve's (JELA Barataria Unit), three battlefields, i.e., two civil war battlefields –VICK Vicksburg National Military Park (VICK) and JELA's Chalmette National Historic Park and a U.S.-Mexican War battlefield – Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site (PAAL), a Spanish mission park – San Antonio Missions National Historical Park (SAAN), and a national parkway – Natchez Trace Parkway (NATR).
The network's habitat variation includes barrier islands/seashores, coastal fresh to brackish marshes, bottomland hardwoods, cypress-tupelogum swamps, Mississippi River alluvial floodplain and loessal bluffs, rolling hill country and pastures, and the dry scrub/grasslands of Edwards Plateau. In their ecological affinities, the network parks can generally be thought of as belonging mainly to three physiographic regions: the West Gulf Coastal Plain of Texas and Louisiana (BITH, PAAL, PAIS, and SAAN), the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (JELA), and the East Gulf Coastal Plain of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida (GUIS, VICK, and NATR). While NATR is predominantly within the East Gulf Coastal Plain throughout most of its length, a portion extends northeast into the extreme western portion to the Cumberland Plateau section of the Appalachian Plateau and into the Highland Rim section and Nashville Basin of the Interior Low Plateau. This expansive geographic area encompassed by the GULN and the network's diverse habitat and its associated biodiversity will ultimately result in the development of a very complex GULN ecosystem conceptual model.
The five goals of Inventory and Monitoring networks are:
- Inventory the natural resources under National Park Service stewardship to determine their nature and status.
- Monitor park ecosystems to better understand their dynamic nature and condition and to provide reference points for comparisons with other, altered environments.
- Establish natural resource inventory and monitoring as a standard practice throughout the National Park system that transcends traditional program, activity, and funding boundaries.
- Integrate natural resource inventory and monitoring information into National Park Service planning, management, and decision making.
- Share National Park Service accomplishments and information with other natural resource organizations and form partnerships for attaining common goals and objectives.
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