Monitoring cave aquatic biota at selected parks in the Cumberland Piedmont Network: Protocol narrative—Version 1.0

Helf, Kurt; Moore, William; Wells, Brenda

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 National Park Service 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 (National Park Service 1999). Through the Challenge, 270 parks in the National Park System were organized into 32 inventory and monitoring networks. All Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) networks within the National Park Service have identified high priority park vital signs, indicators of ecosystem health, which represent a broad suite of ecological phenomena operating across multiple temporal and spatial scales. The intent is to develop a balanced and integrated suite of vital signs that meets the needs of park management and will accommodate unanticipated environmental conditions and management questions in the future. Three parks in the Cumberland Piedmont Network (CUPN) have selected cave aquatic biota (CAB) in subsurface waters as a high priority vital sign for long-term monitoring. These parks include Cumberland Gap National Historical Park (CUGA), Mammoth Cave National Park (MACA), and Russell Cave National Monument (RUCA). Cave aquatic biota were selected for their status as federally-listed endangered species, federal species of management concern, and state species of concern. Given that many cave aquatic biota are unique to the location where they are found, it is likely that CUPN cave aquatic ecosystems harbor greater biodiversity than is currently known. In fact, Edmonson and Lee counties, home to Mammoth Cave NP and Cumberland Gap NHP, rank second and fourth, respectively, among the six counties containing 25% of the known CAB diversity in the contiguous United States. Threats to these cave stream communities include chemical and thermal contamination from surface water flow due to land use inside and outside park boundaries. Runoff from large-scale agriculture increases the nutrient load and Escherichia coli in water flowing into subsurface streams and may alter the structure of stygobiont communities adapted to nutrient-poor conditions. Weather and climate change are expected to significantly alter hydrologic regimes across the Southeast. Increasingly intense or frequent flood pulses moving through cave streams may significantly modify the cave aquatic habitat and structure of CAB communities. Collecting systematic, long-term data to explain the abundance and distribution of CAB metapopulations will provide resource managers with the necessary data to make informed decisions regarding which habitats they should prioritize for protection. Monitoring objectives addressed by this protocol include: 1. For common cave aquatic biota, estimate status and long-term trends in abundance within monitored cave stream reaches in three parks in the Cumberland Piedmont Network. 2. For uncommon target cave aquatic biota, determine status and long-term trends in the probability of occupancy and proportion of reaches occupied within monitored cave stream reaches in three parks in the Cumberland Piedmont Network. 3. Sample selected cave stream habitat characteristics and water-quality and water-quantity parameters that we hypothesize are relevant to gaining an understanding of cave aquatic biota abundance, occupancy, or detectability within monitored cave stream reaches in three parks in the Cumberland Piedmont Network. This monitoring protocol is focused on monitoring a suite of cave aquatic biota that regularly inhabits selected caves within the three CUPN cave parks. We identified seven cave streams among the three cave parks as conducive to visual survey for cave aquatic biota while walking, wading, or snorkeling.

Monitoring cave aquatic biota at selected parks in the Cumberland Piedmont Network: Protocol narrative—Version 1.0

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