Article

Condition of Selected Natural Resources at Cedar Creek & Belle Grove National Historical Park: 2024 Assessment

A view with mostly grasses and other herbaceous plants stretching into the distance. Trees border the view, buildings are present in the distant background, and the blue sky contains many white, puffy clouds.
A view across a rural landscape in Cedar Creek & Belle Grove National Historical Park, with the town of Strasburg, Virginia in the distance.

NPS NRCA Program

America’s National Parks protect abundant and diverse natural resources. The excitement of seeing wildlife in their natural habitat, experiencing the vastness of a dark night sky, or viewing beautiful scenery draws millions of visitors to national parks each year. These natural resources are parts of complex ecosystems, and they interact with other plants and animals and their environment.

Park natural resources respond to both natural and man-made drivers and stressors (such as non-native species, human disturbance, air pollution, and climate change), which vary by resource. Understanding the condition of park natural resources, as well as how they’re changing over time, is vital for managing and protecting the resources.
Resources: 1) Visual Resources, 2) Night Sky, 3) Soundscape, 4) Woodlands, and 5) Meadows. Stressors: Human Development, Light Pollution, Noise Pollution, Invasive Plants, Climate Change.

Focusing in on a set of natural resources at Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP


Cedar Creek & Belle Grove National Historical Park (NHP) is located in western Virginia, approximately 87 miles west of Washington, D.C., and 15 miles northwest of Shenandoah National Park’s north entrance. Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP, 3,708 acres in size, is a partner park and includes sites that are owned and operated independently of the National Park Service (NPS), such as Belle Grove Plantation and Cedar Creek Battlefield. The NPS and five key partners work together to preserve, protect, and interpret a Civil War landscape and antebellum plantation by sharing the story of Shenandoah Valley history from early human occupation through the Civil War and beyond. The park is located in the Shenandoah Valley and includes a variety of habitats, ranging from the Shenandoah River and creeks to terrestrial habitats like woodlands and meadows.

Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP managers selected five resources to study in the NRCA: visual resources, night sky, soundscape, woodlands, and meadows. The NRCA team evaluated these resources as either a condition assessment (three of the resources) or a gap analysis (two of the resources), depending on data availability. A condition assessment is a more thorough evaluation of a resource’s current condition, and a gap analysis highlights what we know and don’t know about a resource and provides suggestions for collecting needed information for future assessments.

Visual Resources

Scenic quality is considered a fundamental resource in parks and is protected by the NPS. Scenic views in Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP include battlefields, historic structures, natural areas, mountains, and pastoral surroundings. Park managers and their partners conducted a visual resource inventory for the NRCA to determine the condition of scenic views at three of the most important viewpoints in the park. Two measures, scenic quality and view importance, were rated separately and then combined into an overall scenic inventory value. This value for each location corresponded to NRCA condition ratings of good/fair for two locations and fair for one location. Surrounding development is the primary factor impacting the park’s visual resources; although the visual resource inventory identified some elements in the park that detracted from views, more detractions were noted from existing development outside park boundaries. Because this visual resource inventory was the first one conducted, no information is available for trends in condition.

Photo of a viewpoint that includes low-growing grass in shades of brown and green, irregularly bordered by trees with and without leaves. The ground level drops in the distance, and the sky is a hazy blue.
Thoburn’s Redoubt Trailhead, one of the viewpoints that received a condition rating of good/fair. Park astronomy events take place at night at this location.

NPS PHOTO

Night Sky

Natural dark night skies are critical to ecosystem function and environmental health, and they are a valued resource protected by the NPS. Wildlife are adapted to natural darkness and depend on it for their health and survival. Staff at Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP provide opportunities for visitors to experience the night sky by hosting public “star parties” in partnership with the Shenandoah Astronomical Society.

For this study, the NRCA team assessed the condition of the night sky using modeled data for the all-sky light pollution ratio metric (ALR) from the NPS Natural Sounds & Night Skies Division (NSNSD). The ALR is an objective measure of night sky condition based on the amount of light in the night sky attributed to human sources. The modeled data indicate that Cedar Creek & Belle Grove’s night sky is, on average, 392% brighter than the natural night sky, leading to an NRCA condition rating of fair. Residential and commercial development near the park and associated night-time lighting, as well as vehicle traffic and lighting on highways and smaller roads, contribute to unnatural light and impact the night sky condition at the park. Night-time lighting within park boundaries probably also contributes to existing levels of unnatural light. Air pollution may also impact the quality of the night sky, since the NPS Air Resources Division estimated that the park’s visibility is in only fair condition based on a five-year (2014–2018) index of haze.

Photo of the early night sky viewed above a lone tree and a more distant group of trees. The sky is still blue with some bright clouds, but many stars are visible, including some particularly bright ones.
The night sky at Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP during a Star Party.

NPS/Buddy Secor

Soundscape

Environments without noise pollution are important to visitors, wildlife, and even plants. Do you recall the most interesting or beautiful sound you’ve ever heard in a national park? Maybe it was a bird, a waterfall, or an experience of silence that enabled you to imagine a historic event. Each park has a unique “soundscape” composed of all the various natural and cultural sounds that help create a sense of place. Loss or change to natural soundscapes impacts a park’s natural and cultural resources. In a park such as Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP, for example, highway noise can interfere with a visitor’s imagining of historic events that took place in the 1800s.

View down a grassy trail (with taller grass off the trail), looking towards a line of green-leaved trees. The blue sky has some puffy clouds.
The sounds heard today along the Morning Attack Trail in Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP are much different than those heard during the morning of October 19, 1864—during a battle between Confederate and Union soldiers.

NPS photo

The NRCA team assessed Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP’s soundscape by using an NPS Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division (NSNSD) model developed several years ago that predicts daytime sound levels during midsummer. Condition was determined using the model’s predicted sound level impact, which is a measure of how much human noise contributes to the existing natural soundscape. Model results indicated a poor condition of sound level park-wide. Although specific noise source information was not provided by the model, known sources of noise in or around Cedar Creek & Belle Grove include major highways and roads, including vehicle traffic and road construction projects, and operation of a new outdoor, open-air firing range outside the park. The NSNSD model does not include current data or data collected at the park, so such a study (to collect current data in the park on natural sounds and noise sources and levels) would greatly benefit park management.

Woodlands

Woodlands cover about 39% of Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP and consist of deciduous, evergreen, and mixed forests. Park woodlands are an important part of the Cedar Creek & Belle Grove landscape, provide wildlife habitat, protect water quality in the Shenandoah River and Cedar Creek (by slowing water movement across the land and reducing soil erosion), and include trees that marked early settlement property boundaries. Stressors, or factors affecting park woodlands, include non-native invasive plants, non-native invasive insect pests, over-browsing by native white-tailed deer, and climate change. To the extent possible based on the available information, the NRCA team provided park-specific information in the NRCA on each of these stressors. For example, at least 12 non-native invasive plant species occur in or adjacent to park woodlands. Eight of these species have an invasiveness rank of “high” and four have a rank of “medium” according to the Virginia Invasive Plant Species List. Also, at least two non-native, invasive insect pests—emerald ash borer and spotted lanternfly—have been reported in the park, with the first causing damage to the park’s ash trees.

View of a somewhat open forest with green, grassy undergrowth.
A woodland in Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP.

NPS/NRCA Program

Although current condition of park woodlands could not be determined due to a lack of current data, the NRCA team provided a summary of available information, identified gaps in our knowledge, and provided ideas for future assessment based on woodlands monitoring in other national park units.

Meadows

Areas of open vegetation within Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP (such as hay/pasture, crops, and herbaceous cover), about 52% of the park, include agricultural fields undergoing restoration to native meadow vegetation. Restoration activities in the Morning Attack Trail field, about 47 acres in size, began in 2016 and include a 2022 project in which much of the field was planted with native grasses and wildflowers. Ecological and other goals for the field include creating habitat for grassland birds and native pollinators (such as butterflies and bees), reducing non-native invasive plants, and improving the viewshed. Native meadows in the eastern United States are valuable for reasons such as water quality improvement, nutrient cycling, and the maintenance of soil health—in addition to being important habitat for native wildlife, pollinators, and other insects.

View of a meadow, with a line of green trees in the background and mountains in the distance, all under a blue sky with some thin, wispy clouds. Meadow plants include grasses and forbs, including bright yellow flowers and light purple flowers.
The Morning Attack Trail field, a former agricultural field, in which NPS has planted native grasses and wildflowers and is controlling non-native vegetation. Primarily native vegetation dominates this view.

NPS/Nathan Wender

Although unable to assess current condition of park meadows due to a lack of comprehensive data, the NRCA team provided a summary of available information and identified gaps in knowledge. As of mid-2023, the Morning Attack Trail field appeared to be in better condition than when restoration activities began. Some woody invasive species have been controlled to maintenance levels, for example, and other such species are greatly reduced. A monitoring effort of at least five years is underway to track the composition and diversity of plants at the site.

Using what we learned to take Action

Knowing the condition of these resources and what information is lacking is only the first step. Study findings also need to be linked to actions park managers can take to better protect the resources. For that purpose, the NRCA team developed management considerations for each focal resource as next steps for furthering science-informed management. Here are a few of the findings for Cedar Creek & Belle Grove NHP.
  • Multiple stressors affect each resource and drive changes that can make resource protection challenging for park managers.
  • Park partners could work together to answer these questions: Are there priority locations within the park for visual resource protection? For priority locations, what are the best tools to use in working with partners and landowners to protect scenic views?
  • Efforts could be made to minimize and/or avoid artificial light intrusion by not only examining NPS lighting for potential improvements, but also by sharing information with park partners and local governments on the importance of dark night skies and measures that can be taken to plan for and restore them.
  • It would be beneficial to have an NPS project to collect acoustic monitoring data in the park to provide managers with baseline data on the park’s acoustic environment and support monitoring efforts related to noise pollution.
  • Information gaps related to park woodlands include: data on the occurrence and impact of emerald ash borer and spotted lanternfly (non-native insect pests), and native white-tailed deer browsing; whether there are locations in the park where present-day woodlands encroach on historical viewsheds or affect the battlefield or other historic features or structures; and data on the prevalence of non-native invasive plants and priority areas for management. Similar data gaps exist for meadows.

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Cedar Creek & Belle Grove National Historical Park

Last updated: May 23, 2024