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Great Sand Dunes: An Outdoor Laboratory
 "I
hate science," my 8-year-old cousin recently announced at a family gathering.
The daughter and cousin of four park rangers and grandchild of several
generations of teachers, she knew this would get our attention. Trying
to sound disinterested, her dad asked why. "Too boring," she declared.
"All you get to do is go around and look at stuff."
'Going around and looking at stuff' is only a part of the science-related
work that occurs at Great Sand Dunes, but most of us agree it's by far
the most enjoyable part. Looking at "stuff"-i.e., plants, animals, insects,
the water table, sand grains, the weather, artifacts created by humans
10,000 years ago, stream flow, pollutants in the air-is the active field
work of many of the researchers and scientists who look at the Great Sand
Dunes and see an outdoor laboratory, far more intriguing than their labs
at home or school.
Although my cousin doesn't realize it, scientific learning has been an
important part of many National Park Service areas for nearly a century.
In 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, which permitted the president
to create national monuments that protected "…objects of historic or scientific
interest." President Roosevelt established 18 national monuments under
the authority of the Antiquities Act, including Devil's Tower National
Monument, Petrified Forest National Monument (redesignated as a national
park in 1962), Grand Canyon National Monument (later incorporated into
Grand Canyon National Park), and Lassen Peak and Cinder Cone (incorporated
into Lassen Volcanic National Park in 1916). Subsequent presidents have
continued to follow Roosevelt's lead.
President Hoover established Great Sand Dunes National Park in 1932.
The legislation states the purpose of the national monument is "…the preservation
of the Great Sand Dunes and additional features of scenic, scientific,
and educational interest…" Like the staffs at many National Park Service
areas, we've come to the conclusion that preserving the dunes and important
"features" of our site requires a better knowledge of just exactly what
those features are, what components they include, and how they interact
with other aspects of the national monument and preserve, including the
dunefield, the creeks, wildlife, and park visitors.
In recent years, the National Park Service has recognized the same needs
system-wide. In 1991 the agency celebrated its 75th anniversary by considering
factors influencing the survival of national parks into the 21st century,
and came up with a series of recommendations known as the Vail Agenda.
While the recommendations addressed many issues, several focused on the
need for a solid scientific understanding of what park resources are,
what must be done to protect them, and the right of the public to share
that understanding. 
In 1999, the NPS Action Plan for Preserving Natural Resources was approved,
with initial funding in 2000. Popularly known as the Natural Resource
Challenge, the program directs parks to consider questions like: What
are we protecting and preserving in parks? What is the condition of park
resources and how does their condition change over time? What is the condition
of resources outside park boundaries (air, water, nonnative and migratory
species) and what impact do they have on resources within the park? What
are the implications of these findings to parks, to the larger systems
in which they reside, and to our society? What actions need to be taken
for the preservation of species? (Read the Natural Resource Challenge
at http://www.nature.nps.gov/challengedoc/index.htm)
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve recently received funding
through the Natural Resource Challenge that will allow considerably more
"looking at stuff" than we've ever been able to accomplish before. Because
Great Sand Dunes National Preserve was created in November 2000 from US
Forest Service lands that have not been carefully surveyed from a biological
point of view, the first step for those areas will be basic inventories
of species. Researchers will be looking for plants and animals there,
as well as double-checking existing records of scientific research in
the national monument.
You may see researchers working on any of the following projects in summer
2002:
- A two-year survey of reptiles and amphibians. Dr. Erin Muths and her
coworkers began this work last summer.
- A two-year survey of birds and small mammals and their habitats.
- A two-year survey of vascular plants, especially focusing on the national
preserve.
- A one-year survey of fish in the creeks and lakes of the monument
and preserve.
- Weed mapping along Medano Creek in the national preserve. We are working
to control a population of leafy spurge, a nonnative and extremely invasive
weed, but suspect other nonnative plant populations exist in that area
as well.
Our longer-term goals include more inventories in the next few years,
including large mammals and bats in 2003 and 2004. More importantly, we
can then use that information to look at the longer term questions every
National Park Service site faces: how can we protect these resources forever?
How can we make them—and the knowledge we've gained from them—available
to everyone? And how can we use that knowledge to insure that every 8
year old who hates science today has a healthy and beautiful natural world
to "go around and look at" when she grows up?
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