Monitoring

The Southern Plains Inventory and Monitoring Program 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. Developing a long term monitoring plan is accomplished in a three stage planning and design process. Phase 1 involves defining the goals of the network, gathering existing data and developing draft conceptual models. During this phase, key factors in the ecosystems are examined and are set up for consideration as potential vital signs. Phase 2 continues the process and involves the actual prioritization and selection of vital signs. Phase 3 involves defining monitoring objectives, developing sampling protocols and addressing long-term data management issues.

The Southern Plains Nework has completed Phases 1 & 2 and is currently progressing to the third and final phase of vital signs development.

What Are Vital Signs?

Vital signs are a subset of physical, chemical, and biological elements and processes of park ecosystems that are selected to represent the overall health or condition of a park’s natural resources, known or hypothesized effects of stressors, or elements that have important human values. They are the key elements that indicate the health of an ecosystem. Vital signs can be any feature of the environment that can be measured or estimated and that provide insights into the state of the ecosystem. Vital signs may occur at any level of organization including landscape, community, population, or genetic levels. Vital signs may be compositional (referring to the variety of elements in the system), structural (referring to the organization or pattern of the system), or functional (referring to ecological processes). << read more

Conceptual Models

A conceptual model is a visual or narrative summary that outlines the interconnections among ecosystem resources (key system components), the strength and direction of those links, and the attributes that characterize the state of the resources. Models should demonstrate how the system works, with particular emphasis on anticipated system responses to stressor input. The model also should indicate the pathways by which the system accommodates natural disturbances and how the system may acquire resilience to disturbance. << read more