Monitoring

SFCN Vital Signs Fact Sheet pdf (111 KB)       SFCN Vital Signs Monitoring Plan

The South Florida / Caribbean Inventory and Monitoring Network is part of an effort in the National Park Service to develop a stronger scientific basis for stewardship and management of natural resources across the National Park System. The National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program was initiated in 1992 with a focus on the completion of basic resource inventories for all parks with significant natural resources, and development of prototype monitoring programs in selected parks and park clusters. In 1997 the US Geological Survey was charged with developing monitoring protocols to be used within parks of South Florida and the Caribbean with significant marine and coral reef related resources. This work progressed through 2002 when the South Florida/Caribbean Network integrated the prototype Longterm Coral Reef Community Monitoring program into the SFCN framework.

As part of the Service's effort to "improve park management through greater reliance on scientific knowledge", a primary purpose of the Inventory and Monitoring Program is to develop, organize, and make available natural resource data and to contribute to the Service's institutional knowledge by facilitating the transformation of data into information through analysis, synthesis, and modeling. The I&M Program's efforts to identify, catalog, organize, structure, archive, and make available relevant natural resource information will largely determine the Program's efficacy and image among critics, peers and advocates.