Natural Resource Condition Assessments for Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve

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• 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, and record a snapshot of their current condition, identify trends, and identify 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.

 

Photograph across Fox Creek toward the Spring Hill Ranch, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.

Photo by Dave Jones, Colorado State University.

Waves of tallgrass prairie once covered 170 million acres of North America. This sea of grass stretched from the Rocky Mountains to east of the Mississippi River and from Saskatchewan, south to Texas. Today, less than 4% remains. The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, created in 1996, protects a nationally significant remnant—nearly 11 thousand acres— of the once vast tallgrass prairie and its cultural resources.

Located in the Flint Hills of Kansas, the preserve is a unique and highly successful partnership between The Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service.

Traditional NRCA Report: 2019

In an effort to better understand the natural resources of Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, a Natural Resource Condition Assessment was completed and published in 2019. In partnership with Colorado State University, a total of 19 resource topics were identified and examined:

		- Land cover and land use				- Night sky
		- Soundscapes				- Scenery
		- Climate change				- Fire disturbance regime
		- Air quality				- Stream hydrology and geomorphology
		- Water quality				- Prairie vegetation
		- Invasive aquatic plants				- Aquatic macroinvertibrates
		- Bird communities				- Bison
		- Butterflies				- Herpetofauna
		- Greater prairie chicken				- Fish communitiy
		- Topeka shiner

The majority of the selected natural resource topics at the preserve were determined to be in moderate or good condition; only air quality was considered to be of significant concern. However, data gaps were identified, along with ecosystem stressors that impact the preserve’s resources and their management. The assessment recommended that regional and preserve-specific mitigation and adaptation strategies be developed to maintain or improve the condition of some of the preserve’s resources over time.

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: Data Store Collection 7765 (results presented are a subset). To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.