Natural resource condition assessment for Russell Cave National Monument

Aber, Jeremy; Sadler, Kim; Nur Hidayati, Siti; Phoebus, Patrick; Grinath, Joshua; El Kadiri, Racha; Harris, Clay; Momm, Henrique; Reed, Aurthur; Perry, Alexis

Roughly nine-thousand years ago following the last glacial maximum, early humans of North America sought shelter from the harsh winters in a small cave located in northern Alabama. Thanks to regular flooding of that cave, Russell Cave National Monument (RUCA) contains one of the longest stories of continuous habitation in North America. RUCA is in Jackson County in northeastern Alabama, less than a mile south of the Tennessee border. Today the monument site consists of twenty-three different archaeological sites and seventeen subsites marking various features and/or locations of prehistoric importance. This Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA) for RUCA compiles existing reports and data to assess current conditions and trends within the monument where possible. The primary objective of this report is to use these condition and trend assessments to augment the informational toolsets available to parks managers. It also helps identify current and future threats to the environmental conditions at RUCA, as well as finding data gaps where more work is necessary. What follows are the collaborative efforts of Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), the Cumberland Piedmont Inventory and Monitoring Network (CUPN), the National Park Service (NPS) Southeast Regional Office, and RUCA. The data used herein was collected from RUCA staff, NPS’s online data portals, published reports from universities and research companies, and personal communications with subject matter experts. Per the terms of the cooperative agreement, no original research was conducted and no new data was generated; only those reports which fell within the requirements set forth by the scoping table developed in collaboration between MTSU and the NPS were used. Evaluation of environmental conditions is based on published documentation of state and federal regulations and technical reports. Of the 25 components analyzed, five are assigned no condition, eight are assigned good condition, eight warrant moderate concern, and four warrant significant concern. Those components that receive no condition either have a lack of data for assessment, or an assessment was not applicable, including topics such as weather and geology. The component that warrants the most concern is invasive/exotic plant species within the monument. The staff at RUCA continue to combat these species, but ten of Alabama’s listed exotic species, including three of the worst 10 in the state, are present at the monument. Continued management will likely be necessary in perpetuity to keep these species at bay. The other categories that warrant significant concern are all related to atmospheric conditions primarily affected by external factors such as federal and state air quality regulations and local industrial activities. These categories include sulfur and nitrogen deposition, as well as visibility. While they currently fall in the significant concern category, the available data shows that they are all improving year-to-year. Some of the most important natural resources at RUCA involve the geology of the cave system, as well as the animal life within the cave including cave bats. These components face serious threats in the form of natural processes eroding and affecting the cave’s structural integrity, and the spread of white-nose syndrome in the bat populations. One aspect that could be better leveraged to monitor and manage environmental factors at RUCA is the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) resources. While GIS technology has been employed at the monument, it is not being utilized to its full potential. Better data handling practices including proper metadata implementation and an expanded push to digitize spatial information would provide a positive impact to the overall management of RUCA. RUCA may be one of the smaller units in the NPS, but it plays host to an important piece of human history.

Natural resource condition assessment for Russell Cave National Monument

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