Assessing national park resource condition along an urban–rural gradient in and around Washington, DC, USA
Lookingbill TR, Schmit JP, Tessel SM, Suarez-Rubio M, Hilderbrand RH. 2014. Assessing national park resource condition along an urban–rural gradient in and around Washington, DC, USA. Ecological Indicators. 42:199-213
Managing parks within an urban and urbanizing landscape context is the new normal for the U.S. NationalPark Service (NPS). The NPS Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) program is tasked with collecting data on thenatural resource condition of all 270 parks in the NPS system deemed to have significant natural resources.Synthesizing this large amount of diverse data into comprehensive assessments of ecosystem integrityhas proven to be a daunting task. We provide an analysis of NPS I&M data for ten national parks locatedalong an urban–rural gradient from Washington, DC to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Mid-Atlantic,USA. Twelve representative metrics of ecosystem condition were selected and combined into singlepark scores using four separate approaches for data aggregation. The different analysis methods werecompared based on criteria including the ability to differentiate among parks, sensitivity to uncertaintyin assessment points, ability to use varied data sources, and information content for management. Theresults support the use of relatively simple methods such as distance-based aggregation scoring for long-term assessment of lands in this mixed-used landscape. Land use change within 5-km buffers adjacentto the parks was significantly correlated with overall scores and was a strong predictor of water qualitymeasures. Urban parks generally scored slightly lower than parks located in more rural settings. However,the distance-based method penalized the urban parks less than other scoring approaches for several smallproblems, and urban parks scored fairly well by this recommended method. Trends in regional land usechange should be carefully monitored, but at present, most of the parks along this urban–rural gradient aresuccessfully fulfilling their mission of sustaining natural resources at a high level of ecological integrity.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Lookingbill, Todd; Schmit, John; Tessel, Samantha; Suarez-Rubio, Marcela; Hilderbrand, Robert
- Units
- ANTI , CATO , GWMP , HAFE , MANA , MONO , NACE , NCRN , PRWI , ROCR , WOTR
- Keywords
- ecosystem integrity, Landscape, Landscape Monitor, Management, National Capital Region Network, NCRN, NCRN Periodical, Urbanization, urban-rural gradient