Natural resource condition assessment: Flight 93 National Memorial

Furedi, Mary; Hnatkovich, Adam; Zimmerman, Ephraim; Braund, Jaclyn

In collaboration with the National Park Service, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (WPC) completed the Natural Resource Condition Assessment (NRCA) for Flight 93 National Memorial (FLNI). The purpose of the NRCA is to provide park leaders and resource managers with information on resource conditions to support near-term planning and management, long-term strategic planning, and effective science communication to decision-makers and the public. Flight 93 National Memorial is a 2,277 acre memorial located in Somerset County in southwest Pennsylvania, near Shanksville, PA. The park marks the crash location where, on the morning of September 11, 2001, passengers and crew of hijacked United States Flight 93 selflessly thwarted a planned attack on Washington, D.C. The park was created a year after the crash, September 24, 2002, with the passing of The Flight 93 National Memorial Act (P.L. 107-226). This Act authorized the creation of the park and established the Flight 93 Advisory Commission. The purpose of the park is to honor the passengers and crew members of Flight 93 who courageously gave their lives, allow the public to visit the site and express their feelings about the event and the passengers and crew of Flight 93, and to preserve the solemn and tranquil setting of the crash site of Flight 93. Flight 93 National Memorial is a unique park in that its resources are a combination of culturally significant features to honor the passengers and crew of Flight 93 (Flight 93 National Memorial, Boulder, Hemlock Grove, Impact Site, The Allee and Memorial groves, The Wall of Names, and the Visitor Center Complex) and natural resources that make up the surrounding landscape setting. With the help of both FLNI and National Park Service (NPS) staff, the resources of greatest importance to FLNI were selected for inclusion in the NRCA and are listed below as five focal areas and associated indicators (in parentheses): air quality (ozone, visibility, and wet deposition), night sky and acoustic quality (night sky and soundscape), stream water quality (water chemistry, and aquatic macroinvertebrates), biological quality (birds, pollinators, mammals, and herpetofauna and fish), and ecological quality (natural communities and culturally significant communities). Natural resources were assessed using the framework established by NPS for NRCA development and is described in detail in Chapter 3. For each natural resource, one or more indicators were identified (listed above) along with metrics by which each indicator was assessed. Available data were compiled for each indicator/metric to establish a baseline of reference conditions and a means to determine the current condition/status (good, moderate concern, or significant concern). Since FLNI is not yet part of a larger monitoring network established by NPS, no standardized baseline data exists for assessing resource conditions. Instead, much of the supporting science used to assess park resources for this NRCA were derived from larger, regional data sets (i.e., air quality and night sky and acoustic quality) and from FLNI specific projects (e.g., a bee study at FLNI, plant community mapping of FLNI, and water quality from stream monitoring stations associated with mine reclamation activities) (see Section 2.3.2 Table 2-3 for data sources for all resources). Available data were also used to determine the trend in condition (improving, unchanging, or deteriorating) and confidence of the assessment (high, medium, low). Due to the lack of baseline or monitoring data, it was often impossible to determine trends for indicators. Condition, trend, and confidence scores for each resource indicator were presented in tabular form using standardized symbology (see Section 3.2.1 Tables 3-1 and 3-2). Each resource assessment is detailed in Chapter 4 and summarized in the following paragraphs.

Natural resource condition assessment: Flight 93 National Memorial

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