Tumacácori National Historical Park: Natural resource condition assessment

Baril, Lisa; Struthers, Kimberly; Hubbard, Andy; Mateljak, Anna; Angell, Deborah; Brunson, Mark

The Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA) Program, administered by the National Park Service’s (NPS) Water Resources Division, provides a multidisciplinary synthesis of existing scientific data and knowledge about current conditions of important national park natural resources through the development of a park-specific report. The NRCA process for Tumacácori National Historical Park (NHP) was initiated in 2010 as a collaborative effort between the national historical park staff, the NPS Sonoran Desert Inventory and Monitoring Network (SODN) staff, NPS Intermountain Region, and the Sonoran Institute. Ten focal resources were selected for condition assessment reporting, and in 2017, Utah State University was added as a partner to complete the NHP’s NRCA report. The national historical park’s 10 natural resources evaluated for current conditions were grouped into three broad categories: air and climate (i.e., air quality), water (i.e., hydrology and water quality), and biological integrity (i.e., vegetation and wildlife topics). The majority of resources were found to be of moderate concern except for the wildlife resources— birds and mammals,— which are good. Like many national parks throughout the United States, the resource conditions at Tumacácori NHP are vulnerable to stressors far beyond its borders, such as warming temperatures, variable and intense precipitation events, and surrounding land use changes. These landscape-scale drivers underscore the need for partnerships that transcend political boundaries and instead focus on ecological boundaries to achieve shared conservation goals, thereby improving resource conditions.

Tumacácori National Historical Park: Natural resource condition assessment

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