Vegetation Composition Structure and Soils: Alpine
Establishing GLORIA Plots in GRSA
Importance/Issues
The alpine environment is the product of the interaction of extreme natural conditions, for example, high winds, low temperatures, scouring and burial by snow and ice, high incident solar radiation, thin atmosphere, and a short growing season. Adaptations of species to these conditions, such as low stature, determinant growth cycles, and specific leaf morphology, can result in tight relationships between species persistence and environmental processes (drivers and stressors). Changes in weather and climate patterns, nutrient budgets (due to atmospheric deposition), and human use impacts all have potentially critical influence on the health of alpine communities. The ROMN selected alpine ecosystems as an important monitoring target because they are important to park staff and visitors, and because they are threatened by changes in the systemic drivers.
Preliminary Monitoring Objectives :
- Determine the status and trend in vegetation structure (relative cover of shrubs, grasses, herbs, trees, and bare ground) and composition (within classes and species level) of communities above timberline in appropriate ROMN parks (GLAC, GRSA, ROMO).
Potential Measures
An international effort to monitor changes in alpine communities (GLORIA, the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments) was initiated in 2001. The goals of the GLORIA program include providing a global baseline for vegetation monitoring in alpine environments and assessing the risks of biodiversity loss and ecosystem instability from climate change. This methodology is being extended by cooperators to create a long-term monitoring network at the global scale. Locally, GLORIA aims to collect baseline and monitoring data by using an array of plots to measure vegetation across a set of four neighboring peaks.
Protocol Development and Status
A GLORIA site was established in GLAC by the USGS Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center in 2003. Additional sites are planned for Niwot Ridge (outside ROMO), North Cascades National Park (NCCN), and Yellowstone National Park (GRYN). The ROMN may incorporate this design at ROMO and GRSA, using a sentinel-site approach based on the GLORIA methods.
- Cover, by species, across an elevation gradient
- Daily air and soil temperatures (max., mean, min.) aggregated to document seasonal patterns in the growing season
- Daily soil moisture aggregated to show seasonal fluctuations of the growing season
Contact Information
Isabel Ashton
Natural Resources Program Center
1201 Oakridge Drive, Suite 200
Fort Collins, CO 80525
970-267-2155
Isabel_Ashton@nps.gov
(From: ROMN Vital Sign Monitoring Plan, 2007, page 78 with edits by Dan Manier.)