Natural Resource Condition Assessments for Fort Bowie National Historic Site

Learn about NRCAs

• How do parks use NRCAs?
• Learn more about the NRCA Program

The Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA) Program provides framework, funding, and publishing support to parks to aid in the synthesis and documentation of natural resource conditions. Condition assessment reports are a tool to describe selected park resources, record a snapshot of their current condition, identify trends in condition, and determine potential or current threats and stressors. Understanding the condition and trend of natural resources is key for parks and NPS planners to appropriately prioritize and allocate stewardship resources.

 

Ruins of the fort, Fort Bowie National Historic Site.

NPS photo

For more than 20 years, Fort Bowie, in southeastern Arizona, was at the crossroads of the Chiricahua Apache’s efforts to defend their ancestral homeland from the U.S. Army’s westward expansion. Visitors to Fort Bowie National Historic Site take a 3-mile roundtrip hike from a parking lot to the visitor center and fort ruins. Visitors walk past Apache Spring and several historic structures on their way to the first and second forts. The park is located at the juncture of four major biogeographical provinces—Madrean, Rocky Mountain, and Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts—and is dominated by grassland, chapparal, and riparian woodland corridors. Because of these four provinces, as well as diverse geology and reliable springs, the park is especially ecologically diverse.

Links to NRCA Products
Materials produced by the park and the NRCA Program.

For other reports and natural resource datasets visit the NPS Data Store.

Source: NPS DataStore Collection 7765 (results presented are a subset). To search for additional information, visit the NPS DataStore.