Plant community monitoring protocol for the San Francisco Bay Area Network of National Parks: Standard operating procedures version 1.0
Steers R, Denn M, Wrubel E, Forrestel A, Johnson B, Parsons L, Villalba F. 2016. Plant community monitoring protocol for the San Francisco Bay Area Network of National Parks: Standard operating procedures version 1.0. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
This document contains the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that are to be utilized in the implementation of the Plant Community Monitoring Protocol for the San Francisco Bay Area Network (SFAN). The narrative that describes the goals, objectives, and means of carrying out this monitoring effort are contained in a separate companion document (Steers et al. 2016). Both the narrative document, the SOPs contained herein, and additional ancillary maps and documents referenced in these documents but stored on the SFAN Inventory and Monitoring server, must all be consulted in order to properly execute this monitoring protocol. This document contains 23 separate SOPs that are to be strictly adhered to. However, unforeseen issues or circumstances may require future changes to these SOPs. Extreme caution must be followed when changing any SOP. Sometimes, alterations can render past monitoring data obsolete. It is of the utmost importance to ensure that methodology is not altered in such a way that past efforts cannot be utilized in long term trend analyses. Detail instruction on how to make and record future changes are described in SOP 19. Lastly, many of these SOPs were based on previously written ones found in protocols used for similar vegetation monitoring purposes, especially from the North Coast Cascade (Acker et al. 2010) and Klamath (Odion et al. 2011) Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Networks. In addition, many other national park service vegetation monitoring protocols were also consulted.
- Type
- Standard Operating Procedure
- Authors
- Steers, Robert; Denn, Marie; Wrubel, Eric; Forrestel, Alison; Johnson, Brent; Parsons, Lorraine; Villalba, Fernando
- Date of Issue
- 2016-08
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- GOGA , MUWO , NRSS , PINN , PORE , SFAN
- Keywords
- Long-term Monitoring, Monitoring, Plant Communities, Plants, Protocol, SOPs, Standard Operating Procedure, Vegetation