Northeast Temperate Network permanent freshwater wetland monitoring protocol for Acadia National Park: 2020 revision
Miller KM, Mitchell BR, Weed AS. 2021. Northeast Temperate Network permanent freshwater wetland monitoring protocol for Acadia National Park: 2020 revision. Natural Resource Report. NPS/NETN/NRR—2021/2276. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado. https://doi.org/10.36967/nrr-2286693
This protocol outlines the justification and methods for long-term monitoring of permanent freshwater wetlands in Acadia National Park (ACAD) by the National Park Service (NPS) Northeast Temperate Network (NETN). This protocol is comprised of multiple documents, including this narrative, standard operating procedures, a quality assurance plan, a safety plan, a summary of major protocol changes, and Environmental Protection Agency field and lab manuals. The complete protocol package containing the latest version of each of these documents is accessible in the Permanent Freshwater Wetland Monitoring Project in the NPS Data Store (available at: https://irma.nps.gov/Datastore/Reference/Profile/2208704). The overall goal of this protocol is to monitor status and trends in vegetation, hydrology, soil and water quality, and indicators of wetland condition and stressors in ACAD's freshwater wetlands. NETN uses a three-tiered approach to wetland monitoring, where level 1 is a GIS-based monitoring of landscape condition, level 2 is a rapid field-assessment, and level 3 is an intensive field-assessment. NETN conducts level 3 monitoring in 10 sentinel sites, which were non-randomly selected to represent the best condition of various wetland types in ACAD, and are sampled following protocols developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the National Wetland Condition Assessment (NWCA). During the years between the EPA NWCA, NETN conducts rapid assessment monitoring (RAM; Level 1 and 2) following the USA-Rapid Assessment Manual (USA-RAM) at 40 randomly located wetland sites in ACAD. NETN also monitors continuous water level during the growing season in the eight sentinel wetlands on Mount Desert Island (MDI) in ACAD.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Miller, Kate; Mitchell, Brian; Weed, Aaron
- Date of Issue
- 2021-07
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- DOI
- 10.36967/nrr-2286693
- Units
- ACAD , IMDP , NETN , NRSS
- Keywords
- ACAD, Freshwater, NETN, wetland monitoring, x#freshwaterWetland, x#NETN, x#protocols
- Subjects
- Ecological Framework: Biological Integrity | Focal Species or Communities | Wetland Communities