Saratoga National Historical Park natural resource condition assessment

Wagner, Rebecca; Cole, Charles; Brittingham, Margaret; Ferreri, C.; Gorenflo, Larry; Kaye, Margot; Orland, Brian; Tamminga, Ken

The Saratoga National Historical Park (SARA) includes over 3,400 acres along the historic Hudson River. The park is located in Saratoga County, NY, and is distributed within the towns of Stillwater and Saratoga. SARA’s mosaic landscape integrates undulating fields, grassland habitat, mature forested areas and streams, ponds, rivers and floodplains, all which played a significant role in the defeat of British forces during the American Revolution. The battlefield at Saratoga was established as a US National Historical Park on June 1, 1938 under authorization of the United States Congress (52 Stat. 608; 16 U.S.C, secs. 159-159c) in order to commemorate the first significant American military victory during the American Revolution, specifically the 1777 Battle of Saratoga. Saratoga National Historical Park’s purpose has been designated as follows: “Saratoga National Historical Park preserves and protects sites associated with the battles, siege, and surrender of British forces at Saratoga, which were decisive events in the winning of American independence. The park interprets these and other sites, events, and people associated with the 1777 military campaign in the Champlain-Hudson and Mohawk valleys (also known as the Burgoyne Campaign)” (SARA General Management Plan 2004). SARA preserves and interprets four non-contiguous units associated with the American Revolution: the Battlefield Unit (Stillwater, NY), the General Philip Schuyler House (Schuylerville, NY), the Saratoga Monument (Victory, NY) and Victory Woods (Village of Victory, NY). The Battlefield Unit, the largest contiguous parcel of SARA (approximately 4 square miles), is bounded by Route 4 to the east and Route 32 to the west and south. General Philip Schuyler House, Saratoga Monument and Victory Woods are commonly referred to as Old Saratoga Unit. The Schuyler House is the restored home of American General Philip Schuyler located near Fish Creek and the Hudson River while the Saratoga Monument commemorates the American victory in the Battle of Saratoga. Victory Woods is a22 acre woodland which was used by the British as their final defensive position before surrendering. The cultural aspects of SARA are well documented but the natural resources that compose the park are less well known. The preservation of the natural environment, viewshed and historic structures within all units composing SARA is vital in order to sustain the park’s culturally driven purpose. It is the purpose of this report to gather the known data on SARA’s natural resources and provide a sound and scientifically driven assessment of the conditions of those resources. We used Vital Sign indicators set forth by the NPS Northeast Temperature Network (NETN) as the baseline and developed the local data sets to compare with those values. The majority of natural resource data was collected for the Battlefield Unit, with a lesser quantity of data available for the Old Saratoga Unit. Each evaluated natural resource in this NRCA begins with a brief description of the relevance and context of the resource to the general environment and SARA. A review of the data and methods used to assess the resource was established, followed by justification of condition categories by discussing reference conditions or threshold values utilized. The reference conditions and threshold values were based on federal or state agency regulations and criteria, peer-reviewed research, estimates of biotic integrity, or established NPS NETN Vital Signs condition categories for natural resources and NPS Air Resources Division categories.

Saratoga National Historical Park natural resource condition assessment

Series

Collections