Protocol implementation plan for aspen monitoring in Great Basin National Park and Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument: Narrative version 1.0

Strand, Eva; Hupp, Nicole; Lehman, Mark; Wright, Sarah; Lonneker, Jeff

The mission of the National Park Service (NPS) 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 NPS 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. The Mojave Desert Inventory & Monitoring Network (MOJN) is one of 32 monitoring networks in the NPS. These networks were established to collect and analyze data about park natural resource conditions, take inventory of park species and natural features such as springs and streams, and monitor changes in these valuable resources over time. MOJN is comprised of nine national park units located within the Mojave and Great Basin deserts of Nevada, Arizona, and California. The MOJN parks encompass over 3.3 million hectares in the lower 48 states. Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) is a species of interest for two MOJN parks, Great Basin National Park (GRBA) and the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument (PARA). Aspen is a focal resource in these parks because of its biological and aesthetic significance. Aspen clones are among the most biologically rich plant communities in the Intermountain West and act as a keystone species (Kay 1997). Aspen stands provide forage for wildlife and domestic livestock in western landscapes, and declining aspen habitats has been shown to result in losses of vertebrate species and vascular plants as well as invertebrates and nonvascular organisms (Campbell and Bartos 2001). Aspen is also an important attraction for campers, naturalists, and recreationists in the otherwise semi-arid landscapes of GRBA and PARA. This document is a Protocol Implementation Plan (PIP) which, like a protocol, specifies a long-term monitoring program; however, unlike a protocol, a PIP is based on an already existing protocol. This PIP adapts objectives, sampling design, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and other components from the Upper Columbia Basin Network (UCBN) Aspen Monitoring Protocol Narrative and SOPs (Strand et al. 2009) to MOJN parks. The methods outlined in this document have been tested and utilized in two parks in the UCBN (City of Rocks National Reserve and Craters of the Moon National Monument) since 2007. However, climate conditions in GRBA and PARA are different then in the UCBN parks, as are the spatial distribution and accessibility of aspen stands. The UCBN protocol has been modified here to account for those differences. Together, the UCBN and MOJN datasets can contribute information over a large region which will be important for understanding consequences of climate change for aspen across the semi-arid regions of the United States. This PIP provides background information, a conceptual framework for monitoring, specific monitoring objectives, a plan for implementing monitoring plots, and proposed analysis procedures for monitoring the aspen woodlands in two MOJN parks, GRBA and PARA. The document consists of a narrative and a set of standard operating procedures which detail the steps required to collect, manage, and disseminate the data representing the status and trend of aspen regeneration and density within the selected parks.

Protocol implementation plan for aspen monitoring in Great Basin National Park and Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument: Narrative version 1.0

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