Mojave Desert Network Inventory and Monitoring selected large springs protocol: Standard operating procedures

Moret, Geoffrey; Caudill, Christopher; Lehman, Mark; Tallent, Nita; Starcevich, Leigh Ann

The mission of the National Park Service is “to conserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment of this and future generations”. To uphold this goal, the Director of the NPS approved the Natural Resource Challenge to encourage national parks to focus on the preservation of the nation’s natural heritage through science, natural resource inventories, and expanded resource monitoring. Through the Challenge, 270 parks in the national park system were organized into 32 inventory and monitoring networks. The Mojave Desert Network (MOJN) includes eight units of the National Park system: Death Valley National Park, Great Basin National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Manzanar National Historic Site, Mojave National Preserve, Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, and Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. Collectively, these parks comprise 3.3 million hectares or 9.7 percent of the total land area managed by NPS. MOJN I&M has identified 20 priority park vital signs- indicators of ecosystem health- which represent a broad suite of ecological phenomena operating across multiple temporal and spatial scales. This protocol addresses three of these vital signs (Surface Water Dynamics, Surface Water Chemistry, and Groundwater Dynamics and Chemistry) in springs that have been selected as high priorities for monitoring. Monitoring of a statistical sample of the spring population and monitoring of streams and lakes are addressed in a separate set of protocols. The data collected for this protocol will be used to monitor: 1. Spring discharge 2. Spring water chemistry and quality 3. Benthic macroinvertebrate and springsnail communities Discharge will be measured in the field, while spring water chemistry will be measured using in-spring water quality instruments and laboratory analysis of water samples. Benthic macroinvertebrate sampling and springsnail monitoring will be used to monitor these important biological communities and to monitor for biological responses to changes in discharge and water quality. As recommended by Oakley et al. (2003), the protocol consists of a narrative (see IRMA reference 2225892) and a set of standard operating procedures (this document), which detail the steps required to collect, manage, and disseminate the data representing the status and trend of water quality parameters in the network. Collected data, in combination with other vital signs monitoring, will provide a context for the interpretation of status and trends in water resources within the network. The protocol is intended to be a “living” document that evolves as new information emerges and methodologies are refined. Changes to the protocol are carefully documented in a revision history log. The first five years of monitoring will address outstanding questions related to site variability, inter-annual variability, and baseline conditions. From there, the focus will shift toward trend analysis, in which ecologically meaningful declines or increases will be detected, and appropriate management strategies can be developed.

Mojave Desert Network Inventory and Monitoring selected large springs protocol: Standard operating procedures

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