Southeast Coast Network

Inventory and Monitoring Program

The Inventory and Monitoring Program is a major component of the National Park Service’s strategy to improve park management through greater reliance on scientific information. Nationwide, 270 national parks have been grouped into 32 Vital Signs Networks linked by geographic similarities, common natural resources, and resource protection challenges.  The network approach facilitates collaboration, information sharing, and economies of scale in natural resource monitoring. 

The Southeast Coast Network (SECN) includes seventeen national parks with significant natural resources and extends along the Atlantic coast from the North Carolina-Virginia border south to Cape Canaveral, Florida and inland as far as Atlanta, Georgia and the Alabama Coastal Plain. The northern and southern boundaries are significant in that both coincide with generally recognized geographical delimiters for species distributions. The southern end of Chesapeake Bay and the James River represent the northern and southern boundaries for large numbers of species, including many associated with bottomland hardwood communities throughout the southeastern U.S. Likewise it is within the waters of Canaveral National Seashore that coastal wetlands transition from Spartina alterniflora dominated salt marsh, ubiquitous along the southeastern coast, to the mangrove swamps more typical of sub-tropical latitudes.

The five primary goals of the Network's Inventory and Monitoring program are to:

• 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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