Plant Community Composition and Structure Monitoring for Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, 2013 Annual Report

Authors

Isabel W. Ashton, United States National Park Service, Northern Great Plains Inventory & Monitoring Network
Michael Prowatzke, United States National Park Service, Northern Great Plains Inventory & Monitoring Network

Date of this Version

1-2014

Citation

Natural Resource Data Series NPS/NGPN/NRDS 2014/602 / NPS 165/123429, January 2014: vi, 22 pages

Published by the United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, Fort Collins, Colorado

Also available at: http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/units/ngpn/monitor/plants.cfm

http://www.nature.nps.gov/publications/nrpm/

Please cite this publication as:

Ashton, I. W. and M. Prowatzke. 2014. Plant community composition and structure monitoring for Agate Fossil Beds National Monument: 2013 annual report. Natural Resource Data Series NPS/NGPN/NRDS—2014/602. National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado.

Comments

United States government work. Public domain material.

Abstract

Introduction

During the last century, much of the prairie within the Northern Great Plains has been plowed for cropland, planted with non-natives to maximize livestock production, or otherwise developed, making it one of the most threatened ecosystems in the United States. Within Nebraska, greater than 77% of the area of native mixed-grass prairie has been lost since European settlement (Samson and Knopf 1994). The National Park Service (NPS) plays an important role in preserving and restoring some of the last pieces of intact prairies within its boundaries. The stewardship goal of the NPS is to “preserve ecological integrity and cultural and historical authenticity” (NPS 2012); however, resource managers struggle with the reality that there have been fundamental changes in the disturbance regimes, such as climate, fire, and large ungulate grazing, that have historically maintained prairies, and there is the continual pressure of exotic invasive species. Long-term monitoring in national parks is essential to sound management of prairie landscapes, because it can provide information on environmental quality and condition, benchmarks of ecological integrity, and early warning of declines in ecosystem health.

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument (AGFO) was established in 1965 to protect and preserve a large concentration of ancient mammal fossils. The park contains 2, 270 acres of native mixed-grass prairie intersected by riparian vegetation along the Niobrara River. Vegetation monitoring began in AGFO in 1998 by the Heartland Inventory & Monitoring Program (James 2010) and the Northern Great Plains Fire Ecology Program (FireEP; Wienk et al. 2011). In 2010, AGFO was incorporated into the Northern Great Plains Inventory & Monitoring Network (NGPN). At this time, vegetation monitoring protocols and plot locations were shifted to better represent the entire park and to coordinate efforts with the FireEP (Symstad et al. 2012b), and sampling efforts began in 2011 (Ashton et al. 2011). The long-term objectives of the NGPN and FireEP plant community monitoring effort in AGFO are to:

1. Determine park-wide status and long-term trends in vegetation species composition (e.g. exotic vs. native) and structure (e.g. cover, height) of herbaceous and shrub species.

2. Improve our understanding of the effects of external drivers and management actions on plant community species composition and structure by correlating changes in vegetation composition and structure with changes in climate, landscape patterns, atmospheric chemical composition, fire, and invasive plant control.

This report is intended to provide a timely release of basic data sets and data summaries from our sampling efforts at AGFO in 2013, our third year of sampling. We visited 6 plots, and it will take 2 more years to visit every plot in the park twice (Figure 1). In addition, we surveyed vegetation in 5 plots that were first installed in 1997 by the Heartland Inventory & Monitoring Network. These plots are concentrated in the southeast corner of the park to evaluate the effects of trail construction (Figure 1). We also sampled vegetation at 11 plots along the riparian corridor at AGFO for the second year in a pilot study to develop a long-term monitoring approach for this area. The riparian corridor is narrow and not adequately represented in our standard sampling, but is of great ecological and management importance to the park. We expect to produce reports with more in-depth data analysis and interpretation when we complete 5 years of sampling. In the interim, reports, spatial data, and data summaries can be provided for park management and interpretation upon request.