BIODIVERSITY INVENTORY:
APPROACHES, ANALYSIS, AND SYNTHESIS

Technical Report NPS/NER/NRTR--2005/015

James H. Boone¹, Carolyn G. Mahan², and Ke Chung Kim

Center for BioDiversity Research, Environmental Consortium
Frost Entomological Museum
Department of Entomology
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802

¹current address
Field Museum of Natural History
1400 S. Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60605-2496

²current address
209 Hawthorn Building
Penn State Altoona
Division of Mathematics and Natural Science
Altoona, PA 16601

May 2005

U.S. Department of the Interior
National Park Service
Northeast Region
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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Summary

Many national parks have completed biological inventories for specific taxa. The data generated by these inventories are important in assisting resource managers in the development of General Management and Resource Management Plans. However, biological inventories are often not coordinated across taxa and may not be conducted in a statistically relevant manner. Therefore, combining or integrating data from these inventories in order to assess biodiversity conditions at national parks may be difficult.

We conducted an extensive search and review of literature and internet-based resources to determine the availability of current biodiversity inventory approaches and analysis and synthesis techniques. Specifically, we reviewed analytical and statistical tools used to analyze and integrate biodiversity data collected through site-specific, taxon-based inventories. Based upon the type of inventory data collected at national parks, we determined that Decision Support Systems (DSS) would be able to integrate multi-taxa inventory data sets for analysis and provide tools such as biodiversity maps to help resource managers make sound management decisions.

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