Wetland monitoring protocol for Cuyahoga Valley National Park: Narrative

Bingham, Sonia; Young, Craig; Haack-Gaynor, Jennifer; Morrison, Lloyd; Rowell, Gareth

Cuyahoga Valley National Park includes nearly 2,000 wetlands within its legislative boundary. These wetlands consist of three dominant types: 1) riverine wetlands located adjacent to river and stream courses, 2) headwater and slope wetlands where groundwater first emerges to the surface, and 3) depressional wetlands where the topography supports the accumulation of water from various sources. These wetlands provide important habitats and ecological services within the park. Because of their sensitivity to surrounding land use, we have chosen to monitor wetlands as part of the National Park Service’s vital signs monitoring program. To monitor wetlands, we will use standard protocols that have been developed by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. The methods include options for rapid assessment and intensive assessment. We will rapidly assess 250 wetlands throughout the park. We will also intensively assess 60 wetlands. These wetlands are located in watersheds that show varying relative levels of human disturbance (i.e., low, medium, and high). We hope that allocating our sample in this way will allow us to understand how changes in wetlands may result from surrounding land uses. Finally, using the intensive methods, we will sample eight wetlands of management concern and eight reference sites. Wetlands of management concern are important to the park for explicit management reasons, while reference wetlands reflect our perceptions of a very high quality, undisturbed example of a wetland. In addition to vegetation monitoring, we will also measure changes in hydrology (especially water depth) and water quality within each wetland. These data will be managed using standard GIS and database programs. Over time, the results of this work should provide an overview of the condition of wetlands within Cuyahoga Valley National Park. In addition, we should be able to assess negative or positive changes within these wetlands as measured by vegetation, hydrology, and water quality. These data will help the park explain to surrounding communities how the actions in the surrounding landscape affect wetland systems within parks. While these data may indeed help to detect and diagnose changes in these park resources, we urge park managers to act boldly to protect park wetlands even in the absence of data that immediately identify effects of degradation. Monitoring and management work best as a unified rather than isolated approach to natural resource stewardship.

Wetland monitoring protocol for Cuyahoga Valley National Park: Narrative

Series

Collections