Vital Sign - Wetland Communities

Importance/Issues

Wetlands are important components of nearly all ROMN watersheds and provide many valuable ecological and socioeconomic functions. For example, relative to their area, wetlands support a disproportionate amount of the biodiversity in each ROMN park. Wetland vegetation is also an excellent indicator of changes in groundwater levels and sediment dynamics. However, wetlands are vulnerable to stressors functioning at the site and landscape scales, and many ROMN wetlands are likely in a degraded condition (e.g., species assemblages and dynamics may not be within a normal range of variability due to hydrologic modifications such as changes in groundwater levels or stream diversions, fill, overgrazing by native ungulates, historical grazing by domestic livestock, atmospheric deposition, and invasion by exotic taxa).

Preliminary Monitoring Objectives

• Determine long-term status and trend in spatial extent of wetland by key type within each park.
• Monitor the status and trend in vegetation assemblages at the park scale using multimetric indices.
• Quantify the seasonal, annual, and/or decadal water-table depth and dynamics and its statistical relationship with a multimetric vegetation index of biotic integrity at a subset of wetland sites.
• Determine the proportion and longterm trend in wetland areas that meet regulatory criteria for water and sediment chemistry (nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur) and/or derived reference levels.
• Determine the extent, temporal dynamics, and relative importance of impacts from ungulate herbivory, beaver presence/absence, and invasive species at a subset of wetland sites and/or at the park scale.
• Determine the status and trend in select measures (e.g., area, fragmentation,
  connectivity) of the meso- (the buffer zone around a given wetland or its immediate drainage catchment) and landscape-scale context, composition, and structure of wetland systems.

Potential Measures

• Plant species composition, abundance, frequency and cover
• Water table depth
• Presence/absence and of invasive plant taxa
• Water chemistry
• Presence/absence of beaver sign
• Presence/absence of elk herbivory

Protocol Development and Status

Protocol development began in 2006 cooperatively with David Cooper at Colorado State Univ. The draft protocol will be completed in May 2007 and initial implementation and pilot work will be done in Rocky Mountain NP in summer 2007.

Contacts

Billy Schweiger
Natural Resources Program Center
1201 Oakridge Drive, Suite 200
Fort Collins, CO 80525
970-267-2147
Billy_Schweiger@nps.gov