Weather and Climate Monitoring

Parks: All MIDN parks

Vital signs:

Weather and climate

Justification:

Climate is a dominant factor driving the physical and ecologic processes affecting the MIDN (Davey et al. 2006). Climate variations are responsible for short- and long-term changes in ecosystem fluxes of energy and matter and have profound effects on underlying geomorphic and biogeochemical processes. Individual storm events do occasionally impact and alter the structure of plant and animal communities in the MIDN. Future climate changes will likely cause migrations of plant and animal communities both northward and to higher elevations. Superimposed on this is a long history of human use in the region, with accompanying land-use patterns that have fragmented the original MIDN landscape of wetlands and upland forests and will influence the ability of the plant and animal communities of the MIDN to adapt to climate changes. Because of its influence on the ecology of MIDN park units and the surrounding areas, climate was identified as a high-priority vital sign for MIDN.

Monitoring objectives:

1. Document long-term trends in weather and climate through seasonal and annual summaries of selected parameters (e.g., multiple forms of precipitation, temperature).

2. Identify and document extremes and averages of climatic conditions for common parameters (e.g., precipitation, air temperature), and other parameters where sufficient data are available (e.g., wind speed and direction, solar radiation).

3. Provide information on near real-time weather parameters, historical climate patterns, and climate station metadata from a single, easy to use Internet portal.

Protocol status: In development