Non-Native Plant Survey at Glacier National Park

Wood, Shana; Rew, Lisa

This report presents the results of a non-native plant survey performed in Glacier National Park (GLAC) in 2003. The purpose of the survey was to identify and map the distribution of nonnative plant species that were of concern to park resource managers or were known to be potentially invasive in other areas. The survey at Glacier was part of a larger inventory and mapping project initiated by the Intermountain Region (IMR) of the National Park Service (NPS). Several cooperators mapped 19 national parks in the Intermountain Region of the western US. The goals of the IMR project were to develop a database that would assist resource managers with invasive plant management and control, provide baseline data for long term monitoring efforts, and facilitate data sharing within the NPS and with external agencies. The specific goals of resource managers at Glacier National Park were: · to develop maps of non-native plant species to assist with non-native plant management, · to identify areas with relatively few non-native plants, · to search for potential new invaders. To achieve these goals we surveyed the area of interest using two different sampling methods. In general, we demarked the area of primary interest with transects. These transects were walked and the occurrence of target non-native plants and other variables were recorded with Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. In areas of secondary interest, or areas that were too topographically difficult to sample intensively we still used transects but targeted them to follow the landscape or geographical features. Therefore, this approach was biased, providing information around a certain feature but not at a distance from that feature. However, in combination with our primary method we are confident our survey provides representative data of the species occurrence in the environment. Maps of target plant species’ distributions are provided in the report, as well as tables summarizing the acres infested by each species mapped. No sampling method is completely accurate and we therefore provide an estimation of the uncertainty associated with sampling each species. The invasive plant database and maps produced from the survey of Glacier National Park are a singular look at the invasive plant distribution in mid-summer of 2003. The data should be considered baseline, or a starting point from which to monitor and assess changes in invasive plant populations in the area over time. A short discussion of the next phase, monitoring invasive plant populations, is included in a recommendations section.

Non-Native Plant Survey at Glacier National Park

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