George Washington Carver National Monument (GWCA) BioBlitz event - 2013
Hinsey JA and Johnson TM. 2014. George Washington Carver National Monument (GWCA) BioBlitz event - 2013. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/HTLN/NRDS—2014/686. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
On September 27-28, 2013, a BioBlitz was held at the George Washington Carver National Monument (GWCA) located in Diamond, Missouri. This event was held in conjunction with National Public Lands Day. George Washington Carver National Monument is a 240-acre park located in southwest Missouri that was set aside in 1943 to preserve the boyhood home of George Washington Carver, a noted scientist, educator, and inventor. The property consists of restored tall grass prairies, forests, streams, and a spring-fed pond.\ A BioBlitz is an event where volunteer scientists, teachers, students, and citizen scientists work together to find and identify as many different taxa as possible within a designated area using scientific methods and expertise. BioBlitz events and citizen scientists help “bridge the gap” and provide additional biological information that our parks can use in maintaining and restoring park resources. Over the 24-hour period, the teams, comprised of 24 volunteers, collected over 1200 organisms representing 141 unique taxa, of which 89 taxa had not previously been reported from the park. An additional 15 park visitors participated in the educational program. The GWCA park staff is in the process of planning another BioBlitz event scheduled for September 2014 with the focus taxa being land snails, butterflies, and grasshoppers and their relatives. It was agreed by all that George Washington Carver would be pleased to see citizen scientists making scientific discoveries just as he did many years ago as a child.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Hinsey, Janice; Johnson, Theresa
- Date of Issue
- 2014-08
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- GWCA , HTLN , NRSS
- Keywords
- bioblitz, Biodiversity, HTLN Network Planning Documents