FY2008 Annual Accomplishments Report for Inventories and Vital Signs Monitoring: Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network (NCBN)

Price, George; Johnson, Elizabeth; Stevens, Sara

The Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network (NCBN) includes eight parks located along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to Virginia. These parks represent some of the most ecologically similar collections of lands within the National Park Service. They consist of critical coastal habitat for many rare and endangered species, as well as migratory corridors for birds, sea turtles and marine mammals. They also protect vital coastal wetlands, essential to water quality, fisheries, and the biological diversity of coastal, near shore, and terrestrial environments. These parks represent islands of protected lands within the urban sprawl of the Northeast. Census estimates indicate that populations residing within this zone are growing three times the rate of the total U.S. population. Pressures such as urban encroachment, pollution, and sea level rise, and other effects of global warming, make these coastal parks vulnerable to extreme ecosystem degradation, creating a unique management challenge. Scientifically based data and information on the condition of these park natural resources is key to developing effect management to both maintain and restore coastal park ecosystems. The Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network Inventory and Monitoring Program has been developed to assist and provide parks with credible, defensible scientific information that can be used in a management context to predict both natural and human induced changes to condition in park natural resources. The following summary provides an update for FY08, on specific inventory and monitoring projects being developed by the NCBN program.