Vital Signs:

1
Vital Signs Some Preliminary Trends John
Gross IM Program Ft Collins, CO
2
Roadmap

• Request and responses
• Results and general observations
• Conclusions

3
Goals

• Identify commonalities among networks
• Avoid duplication
• Allocate resources effectively, and
• Provide feedback to networks

4
The request
Send a draft list of vital signs The plan is
to use the items to tabulate how many networks
have identified certain indicators or issues as a
high priority, so that we can identify and
discuss opportunities for further collaboration
and coordination
5
The responses

• High level of creativity in approach and
  philosophy
• Most gt 1 list some many pages
• By network or by individual park unit
• Stressors, attributes, indicators, measurements
• High variation in detail
• water quality vs dissolved oxygen
• birds vs spotted owl
• some phrased as questions

6
Approach

• Examine lists
• SGSAT approach to identify categories
• Assign vital signs to categories
• Select priority vital signs
• Category headings
• Note issues

7
Categories

• Landscape / Humans
• Abiotic
• Biotic terrestrial
• Biotic aquatic

8
Landscape / Humans

• Land use (in and out of parks)
• Land cover (confounded)
• Visitor / backcountry use

9
Abiotic
10
BioticTerrestrial
11
BioticAquatic / Riparian / Wetlands
12
Future summaries

• ecological scale
• region, landscape, ecosystem, .
• broad-scale habitat
• terrestrial, freshwater, marine, wetland,
  riparian
• taxonomic group
• indicator vs attribute
• frequency of measurement

13
Opportunities

• exotic / invasive organisms
• land use / land cover
• remote sensing
• aquatic organisms fish, invertebrates
• water chemistry
• air quality
• animals amphibians, birds, mammals
• deer
• TE species (rare taxa)

14
Conclusions

• significant opportunities for coordination
• categories need to be more specific
• common (concise) format useful
• repeat after October