NPS Photo / Rachel McManamay
Natural resource inventories are a documentation of the condition of plant, animal, or other natural resources. They can include a list of existing species, a count of the number of each species, or a dataset of existing conditions, like air quality. They provide a baseline that can be compared to later assessments to see if conditions are improving or degrading. Sometimes they provide information about the location of plant or animal communities.
Baseline inventories are administered by the National Inventory and Monitoring Division for twelve core areas which are listed below. For more information, see the national inventory program information page.