NPS Photo The National Park Service's Sonoran Desert Network monitors air quality, climate, exotic plants, birds, and the Santa Cruz River at Tumacácori National Historical Park, and posts monitoring results on their website in a variety of useful formats. They have worked in cooperation with park staff, as well as staff from other federal and state agencies, non-profit organizations, and universities to collect, organize, analyze and sythesize this natural resource data. As background, much like a physician monitors a patient's heartbeat and blood pressure for diagnostic purposes, National Park Service officials need accurate information about the resources in their care. Specifically, they need to know how and why natural systems change over time, and what amount of change is normal, in order to make sound management decisions. In 1998, Congress authorized and funded an initiative to build a stronger scientific foundation for the management and protection of natural resources in national park units across the country. As part of the Natural Resource Challenge, Tumacácori National Historical Park joined 10 other parks in the Sonoran Desert and Apache Highlands where scientists from the Sonoran Desert Network have designed an integrated inventory and monitoring program. The first phase of the program was to verify which natural resources were in the parks via scientific inventories of plants and animals, as well as physical resources, such as air and water quality, climate, geology, and soils. The second phase of the program is long-term "vital signs" monitoring. Vital signs are a set of key natural resources and ecosystem processes selected to represent the overall health or condition of park resources. Vital signs data can provide early warning of ecosystem changes, allowing park managers to develop effective mitigation measures and reduce management costs. |
Last updated: February 24, 2015