Integrated Upland Vegetation and Soils Monitoring for Petrified Forest National Park: 2008 Summary Report
DeCoster JK and Swan MC. 2009. Integrated Upland Vegetation and Soils Monitoring for Petrified Forest National Park: 2008 Summary Report. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/SCPN/NRDS—2009/020. National Park Service Natural Resource Program Center. Fort Collins, Colorado
The Southern Colorado Plateau Network (SCPN) is monitoring vegetation and soils as overall indicators of upland ecosystem integrity. The SCPN Upland Monitoring crew began monitoring at Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO) in 2007 with the establishment of ten plots in the Clayey Fan ecological site and 20 plots in the Sandy Loam ecological site, of which 10 are being monitored. Field methodology is provided in detail in the SCPN Integrated Upland Protocol (DeCoster et al., in review). SCPN plans to sample quadrats and basal gap intercepts annually for 3-5 years to determine the range of temporal variability for key metrics. Power analysis will then be used to determine the total number of plots necessary to detect change in the key metrics. This report documents monitoring activities in the 2008 field season and compares these data with the data collected in 2007.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- DeCoster, James; Swan, Megan
- Date of Issue
- 2009-12
- Publisher
- National Park Service Natural Resource Program Center
- Units
- NRSS , PEFO , SCPN
- Keywords
- Abundance (Biodiversity), Clayey Fan ecological site, Monitoring, Presence (Biodiversity), Sandy Loam ecological site, Soils, Taxa Links To Datasets, Taxa Links To References, upland ecosystems, Vegetation, Vouchers