Integrated upland monitoring in Canyonlands National Park: annual report 2009 (non-sensitive version)

Witwicki, Dana

This report summarizes Northern Colorado Plateau Network (NCPN) upland monitoring in Canyonlands National Park during 2009. It outlines goals and objectives of NCPN upland monitoring, methods of the upland monitoring protocol, and procedures for defining and mapping target populations for monitoring, and describes the results of this year’s efforts and plans for future monitoring. The goal of the Northern Colorado Plateau Network (NCPN) integrated upland monitoring effort is to provide park managers with status and trend information on vegetation and soil attributes. This information is intended to determine natural variability of upland resources and provide early warning of resource degradation.This report summarizes NCPN upland monitoring in Canyonlands National Park (NP) during 2009. It outlines goals and objectives of NCPN upland monitoring, methods of the upland monitoring protocol, and procedures for defining and mapping target populations for monitoring, and describes the results of this year’s efforts and plans for future monitoring. In 2009, the fourth year of monitoring at Canyonlands NP, the NCPN initiated a long-term operational sampling design. A variance assessment and power analysis was performed on the first three years of monitoring data (Witwicki 2010), and the results were used to develop the long-term revisit design. A total of 46 plots were monitored in the Island in the Sky and Needles districts of the park, including 24 grassland plots, 10 blackbrush plots, and 12 pinyon-juniper/blackbrush plots. In this report, measures for 2009 were summarized for each vegetation type. An ordination of vegetation cover by species indicated good separation of plots among all vegetation types. The results also illustrated the common species among all four grassland ecological sites and those that characterized desert and semidesert sites. Early monitoring data describe status of vegetation types, and interpretation is limited until additional data are acquired and more rigorously analyzed.

Integrated upland monitoring in Canyonlands National Park: annual report 2009 (non-sensitive version)

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