Cumberland Piedmont Network Cave Aquatic Biota Monitoring
Helf KL. Cumberland Piedmont Network Cave Aquatic Biota Monitoring. 2015. National Park Service
This monitoring protocol is focused on monitoring a suite of cave aquatic biota that regularly inhabits selected caves within the three Cumberland Piedmont Network (CUPN) cave parks. We identified seven cave streams among the three cave parks as conducive to visual survey for cave aquatic biota while walking, wading, or snorkeling. Three parks in CUPN have selected cave aquatic biota (CAB) in subsurface waters as a high priority vital sign for long-term monitoring. These parks include Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, Mammoth Cave National Park, and Russell Cave National Monument. Cave aquatic biota were selected for their status as federally-listed endangered species, federal species of management concern, and state species of concern. Given that many cave aquatic biota are unique to the location where they are found, it is likely that CUPN cave aquatic ecosystems harbor greater biodiversity than is currently known. In fact, Edmonson and Lee counties, home to Mammoth Cave NP and Cumberland Gap NHP, rank second and fourth, respectively, among the six counties containing 25% of the known CAB diversity in the contiguous United States. Threats to these cave stream communities include chemical and thermal contamination from surface water flow due to land use inside and outside park boundaries. Runoff from large-scale agriculture increases the nutrient load and Escherichia coli in water flowing into subsurface streams and may alter the structure of stygobiont communities adapted to nutrient-poor conditions. Weather and climate change are expected to significantly alter hydrologic regimes across the Southeast. Increasingly intense or frequent flood pulses moving through cave streams may significantly modify the cave aquatic habitat and structure of CAB communities. Collecting systematic, long-term data to explain the abundance and distribution of CAB metapopulations will provide resource managers with the necessary data to make informed decisions regarding which habitats they should prioritize for protection.
- Type
- Project
- Authors
- Helf, Kurt
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- CUGA , CUPN , MACA , RUCA
- Keywords
- cave aquatic ecosystem, cave fauna, n-mixture model, occupancy modeling, stygobite
- Subjects
- Ecological Framework: Biological Integrity | Focal Species or Communities | Cave Communities
Program
Products
- Monitoring cave aquatic biota at selected parks in the Cumberland Piedmont Network: Protocol narrative—Version 1.0
- Monitoring cave aquatic biota at selected parks in the Cumberland Piedmont Network: Data quality standards—version 1.0
- Monitoring Cave Aquatic Biota at Selected Parks in the Cumberland Piedmont Network: Standard Operating Procedures
- Cave Aquatic Biota Pilot Monitoring Dataset for the Cumberland Piedmont Network, 2015
- Examination of the Feasibility of N-Mixture Abundance Models for Monitoring Cave Aquatic Biota via Direct Observation
- Cave Aquatic Biota in CUPN Parks