Natural Resource Monitoring at Morristown NHP

Water Quality Monitoring on Morristown NHP's Passaic River.

NPS/Ed Sharron photo

 

Overview

Morristown National Historical Park is a park rich in history extending back to the Revolutionary War era. The natural areas served as winter encampment sites for General George Washington's American Continental Army between 1779-1780. On March 2, 1933, Morristown became the third historic park added to the National Park Service, the first titled a National Historical Park, incorporating Ford's Mansion, Jockey Hollow and the site of Fort Nonsense.

Morristown National Historical Park's total of 1,705 acres are predominantly deciduous forest, but also includes open fields, and a mixture of wetlands including one permanent pond, numerous seeps, small streams, and a half-mile section of the Passaic River.Its forests are comprised primarily of mixed oak, sugar maple-hardwood, hemlock-hardwood, and chestnut oaks. The park is underlain by Precambrian gneiss and granite rock and Mesozoic siltstone, shale and sandstone sedimentary rock below the extension of late Wisconsinan glaciation, the last glaciation to affect New Jersey. These rock foundations are among the oldest in New Jersey, formed between 1.3 billion and 750 million years ago, and collectively create valleys flanked with high ridges and an erosion resistant environment resulting from the Precambrian rocks.

The park has 27 miles of hiking trails winding through mature forests which Washington's Army utilized to construct a "log-house city" of over 1000 soldier huts and successional forests which have regenerated on agricultural fields abandoned in the 19th and 20th centuries. The mosaic of fields and forests found in the park are interwoven with a wide variety of natural resources containing significant plant and animal communities.

Long Term Monitoring Programs in the Park

 

Click below to learn more

Air Quality	Invasive Species Early Detection
Breeding Landbirds	Phenology
Climate	Water Quality
Forest Health

 

Air Quality Reports

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Source: Data Store Saved Search 1187. To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.

 

Breeding Landbird Reports

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Source: Data Store Saved Search 2272. To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.

 

Forest Health Monitoring Reports

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Source: Data Store Saved Search 1189 (results presented are a subset). To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.

 

Invasive Species Reports

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Source: Data Store Saved Search 1458. To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.

 

Water Quality reports

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Source: Data Store Saved Search 1138. To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.

 

Park Basline Inventories

The Inventory and Monitoring Program provides guidance, funding, and technical assistance for parks to complete a set of 12 baseline, or "basic", natural resource inventories. These basic inventories are common to all parks with significant natural resources, and are intended to provide park managers with the minimum information needed to effectively manage the natural resources of their park.

Baseline Inventories	Complete for Park?	Reports, Documents & Data
Water Quality	Y	Baseline Inventory
Base Cartography	Y	Cartographic data sets: U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Department of Agriculture. National Park Service data clearinghouse for mapping information and geospatial resources.
Air Quality Related Values	Y	Air Quality in Parks
Climate Inventory	Y	Weather and Climate Inventory for NETN parks
Geological Resources Inventory	Y	NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Morristown NHP
Soil Resources Inventory	Y	NPS - SRI - Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO)
Water Body Location and Classification	Y	National Hydrography Dataset
Vegetation Inventory	Y	Vegetation Inventory and Map
Species Lists	Y	IRMA Species Search

 

Park Species Lists

Species lists are available from NPSpecies, the National Park Service's tool for documenting park biodiversity. Keep in mind that these species lists are a work-in-progress. Changes and updates are made as more species are shepherded through a rigorous vetting process. The absence of a species from a list produced with the tool below doesn't necessarily mean the species is absent from a park.

 

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Species Attribute Definitions

Definitions

Occurrence

Occurrence values are defined below. One or more Occurrence Tags may be associated with each Occurrence value.

Present: Species occurs in park; current, reliable evidence available.

Probably Present: High confidence species occurs in park but current, verified evidence needed.

Unconfirmed: Species is attributed to park but evidence is weak or absent.

Not In Park: Species is not known to occur in park.

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Occurrence Tags

Adjacent: Species is known to occur in areas near to or contiguous with park boundaries.

False Report: Species was reported to occur within the park, but current evidence indicates the report was based on misidentification, a taxonomic concept no longer accepted, or other similar problem of error or interpretation.

Historical: Species' historical occurrence in park is documented. Assigned based on judgment as opposed to determination based on age of the most recent evidence.

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Abundance

Abundant:

• Animals: May be seen daily, in suitable habitat and season, and counted in relatively large numbers.
• Plants: Large number of individuals; wide ecological amplitude or occurring in habitats covering a large portion of the park.

Common:

• Animals: May be seen daily, in suitable habitat and season, but not in large numbers.
• Plants: Large numbers of individuals predictably occurring in commonly encountered habitats but not those covering a large portion of the park.

Uncommon:

• Animals: Likely to be seen monthly in appropriate habitat and season. May be locally common.
• Plants: Few to moderate numbers of individuals; occurring either sporadically in commonly encountered habitats or in uncommon habitats.

Rare:

• Animals: Present, but usually seen only a few times each year.
• Plants: Few individuals, usually restricted to small areas of rare habitat.

Occasional:

• Animals: Occurs in the park at least once every few years, varying in numbers, but not necessarily every year.
• Plants: Abundance variable from year to year (e.g., desert plants).

Unknown: Abundance unknown

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Nativeness

Native: Species naturally occurs in park or region.

Non-native: Species occurs on park lands as a result of deliberate or accidental human activities.

Unknown: Nativeness status is unknown or ambiguous.

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List Differences

The Checklist contains only those species that are designated as "present" or "probably present" in the park.

The Full List includes all the checklist species in addition to species that are unconfirmed, historically detected, or incorrectly reported as being found in the park. The full list also contains species that are "in review" because their status in the park hasn't been fully determined. Additional details about the status of each species is included in the full list.

The checklist will almost always contain fewer species than the full list.

Select a Park:

Morristown National Historical Park

Select a Species Category (optional):

All Amphibians Birds Fish Mammals Reptiles Vascular Plants

Get Checklist Get Full List List Differences

Species attribute definitions

Search results will be displayed here.

Visit NPSpecies for more comprehensive information and advanced search capability. Have a suggestion or comment on this list? Let us know.

 

Non NPS Citizen Science Opportunities in the Park

Bird observations from eBird

Morristown NHP has been set up in eBird as a birding "hotspot". Help the park bolster bird data by adding your bird obsevations to eBird when you visit the park. View recent and historic bird observation in Morristown by clicking here.

You can also download and print off a Bird Checklist for the park. The bird list was created using data from the volunteer run NETN Breeding Landbird Monitoring program, eBird observations, and NPSpecies information.

Species observations from iNaturalist

Learn how you can contribute to iNaturalist

View Morristown NHP data on iNaturalist website