Alpine Monitoring and Research in Western National Parks

The goal of this agreement is to facilitate a collaborative working relationship for mutual benefit to accomplish botanical and environmental monitoring and assessment work in alpine environments in National Parks, including conducting surveys of the mountaintop plant community according to the international GLORIA protocol; organizing, training, and leading a diverse group of students and citizen scientists recruited from diverse communities with a special focus on BIPOC communities, academic institutions, and state/federal agencies to assist with these surveys; providing citizen-scientist participants a safe, educational, and meaningful experience in a remote setting; and analyzing, publishing, and presenting research findings on alpine and montane ecosystems within National Park Service boundaries on a timeline in accordance with partner needs.The objectives of this agreement include those needed to conduct the monitoring of alpine vegetation (both forested and non-forested areas found at the highest elevations) within National Parks, the citizen-science outreach, and the dissemination of the science related to those monitoring efforts. This project will:Follow established protocols and contribute to the review and possible development of new protocols to gather data on alpine environments in national parks.Recruit diverse participants for field surveys from citizen scientists, agencies, non-profit organizations, and academia to monitor GLORIA or other forested (e.g., whitebark pine) sites across multiple parks in the west (CA, NV, NM, CO, MT, ID, WY) in coordination with the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Division via networks.Coordinate all field logistics such as transportation, lodging, meals, sampling supplies, etc. for survey participants.Collect and organize data from GLORIA surveys to submit to the GLORIA headquarters in Vienna for international analyses and analyze project data at a regional scaleCollect and organize data from other monitoring or research programs at alpine sites following established protocols and using data management guidance in coordination with the National Park Service.Conduct outreach including talks and seminars for local to national groups and publish in annular reports, popular press, newsletters, and peer-reviewed journals.Provide any data or data summaries as requested by the NPS related to the project forest plan monitoring or other projects.The NATIONAL PARK SERVICE and recipient have mutual interest in increasing the understanding, science-based management, conservation and stewardship of the flora and ecosystems of alpine areas in the National Park System.The NATIONAL PARK SERVICE has a mission to sustain the health and diversity of alpine areas to meet the needs of present and future generations and a need for additional scientific information to support management of these lands.The NATIONAL PARK SERVICE strives to support a high level of excellence in all analysis and monitoring efforts within its parks in order to provide a sound scientific foundation for management decisions. However, staffing constraints and other priority workload may make some desirable long-term monitoring and assessment efforts in very remote locations and in especially extreme environments especially challenging to accomplish.At the same time, we are racing against time. By 2100, the living alpine communities at the tops of mountains are likely to be the first entire ecosystems lost to climate change. The NATIONAL PARK SERVICE and recipient have a shared urgent and mutual interest in understanding ecosystem changes underway in these mountain environments and the need for adaptive management action.Recipient, a partner of the international network GLORIA (Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments), has a mission to assess global distributional shifts of alpine species in response to climate change using a simple repeat sampling method for comparisons across time and place. Typically, ecological field studies are conducted in short 1-3-year timescales tied to funding cycles. In contrast, running continuously since 2004, the recipient survey effort at alpine sites in the Western US has been underway for 20 years and is designed to track ecosystem changes over the timescales matched to actual ecological change.The overall scope of the recipient includes the survey and analysis of permanent plots on twenty-nine alpine summits in the Great Basin region of western North America, including within the Inyo and Humboldt- Toiyabe National Forests, Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, and Death Valley, Great Basin, Sequoia-Kings, and Yosemite National Parks.The recipient project work is conducted under the leadership of scientists and other professionals from major US universities and three US land management agencies—the US Forest Service, US National Park Service, and US Bureau of Land Management—in a truly unusual collaborative venture that crosses traditional boundaries of scientific and land management responsibilities. This cross-disciplinary field work allows forest service scientists opportunities to accomplish NATIONAL PARK SERVICE monitoring and assessment goals while also providing opportunities to form strong working relationships with scientists from other agencies and institutions, giving park service biologists access to expertise, mentorship, and training that would not otherwise be readily available to them.The goal of this agreement is for the NATIONAL PARK SERVICE and the recipient to complement each other’s efforts and to facilitate increased accomplishment of common goals and interests.