Integrated upland vegetation and soils monitoring for Petrified Forest National Park: 2012–2014 summary report
DeCoster JK and Swan MC. 2016. Integrated upland vegetation and soils monitoring for Petrified Forest National Park: 2012–2014 summary report. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/SCPN/NRDS—2016/1040. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
The National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Program was designed to determine the status and monitor the conditions of park natural resources, providing park managers with a scientific foundation for making decisions and working with other agencies and the public to protect park ecosystems.. The Southern Colorado Plateau Network (SCPN) is monitoring vegetation and soils as overall indicators of upland ecosystem integrity (Thomas et al. 2006). SCPN and park staff selected the Clayey Fan and Sandy Loam Upland ecological sites for long-term monitoring of upland vegetation and soils at Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO). An ecological site is a landscape division with characteristic soils, hydrology, plant communities, and disturbance regimes and responses, and its classification is based on soil survey data (Butler et al. 2003). These two ecological sites comprise a large area of the upland grassland ecosystem at PEFO. They face numerous threats, including soil erosion, climate change, and invasion by nonnative species. Between 2007 and 2010 we established and sampled 30 plots in the Clayey Fan ecological site, and 30 plots in the Sandy Loam Upland ecological site. In 2012, we implemented a panel design incorporating these plots, sampling panels A&B in the Clayey Fan ecological site in 2012 and panels B&C in 2014; and panels A&B in the Sandy Loam Upland ecological site in 2013. In this report we document monitoring activities in the Clayey Fan and Sandy Loam Upland ecological sites during the 2012, 2013 and 2014 field seasons, and report these data in the context of the first year of data for the plots collected during the 2007 to 2011 establishment period. For the complete set of data collected at PEFO from 2007–2011, see the data summary reports, available from the SCPN website (http://science.nature.nps.gov/ im/units/scpn/publications.cfm?tab=2)
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- DeCoster, Jim; Swan, Megan
- Date of Issue
- 2016-08
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- NRSS , PEFO , SCPN
- Keywords
- Clayey Fan, long-term monitoring, Sandy Loam Upland, soils monitoring, Upland vegetation