Benefiting Parks

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Summary

The primary objective of the fish inventory project was to establish current distributions of species that will serve as a baseline for monitoring changes in the condition of these resources. Distributional information will also allow park resource managers to identify and conserve unique biological communities and rare/threatened/endangered elements of the regional biota. A secondary objective of the current study was to provide a preliminary ecological assessment of water resources by calculating indices of biotic integrity (IBIs - Karr 1991, Davis and Simon 1995, Karr and Chu 1999, Simon 1999, Bailey et al. 2003) at quantitative sampling sites.

Streams, rivers, ponds, and canals within the six national parks harbor nearly all of the fish diversity of the Potomac River drainage within the geographic region that was sampled. All parks contain most of the fishes that occur in streams that surround them, despite the fact that most parks are small and contain only a subset of potential aquatic habitat diversity. At the regional scale, more than 90% of native species diversity has been documented to occur in the six parks. Several parks (ANTI, CHOH, HAFE, MONO) harbor species with special conservation status, such as pearl dace (Margariscus margarita), white catfish (Ameiurus catus), brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), and checkered sculpin (Cottus sp. cf. cognatus). For these reasons, parks in the National Capital Region are an important component of biodiversity conservation within the mid-Atlantic region. However, because of the fragmented nature of parks and the potential for environmental impacts from surrounding areas, this diversity is not well-protected. Indices of biotic integrity indicate 'Poor' or 'Very Poor' biological integrity at 67% (33 of 49) quantitative sites. Ongoing research will help to identify stressors that affect aquatic resources within parks of the National Capital Region.