How to Run a Small BioBlitz in a National Park

The 2014 BioBlitz at George Washington Carver National Monument. National Park Service photo.

A BioBlitz is a short event — under 48 hours — in which National Park Service staff, professional scientists, teachers, students and citizen scientists work together to find and identify as many species in a park as they can, using scientific methods. The surveys show what lives in a park and where, verify and update existing records, and help "bridge the gap" between broad biodiversity inventories and the intensive monitoring of a park's "vital signs." They also introduce students to scientists and agencies, which can spark careers in natural resources. As David Bowles, leader of the Heartland network's aquatics program, put it, you cannot protect something if you do not know it is there.

A BioBlitz focuses on finding and identifying as many species as possible in a specific area over a short period of time. NPS.

The Park Service and the National Geographic Society have staged large, famous BioBlitzes near cities such as Washington, D.C., San Francisco and New Orleans, but those take extensive planning, major funding, many partners and heavy park and public participation — beyond the means of most parks. So the Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network wrote a guide to a smaller model for small and medium-sized parks. It:

1. focuses on a few understudied groups of species or habitats;
2. accommodates 20–40 volunteers per event;
3. needs little park staff time or money.

Why parks do it

The Park Service created its Natural Resource Inventory and Monitoring program in 2001 to fill gaps in knowledge about park resources; its networks now serve more than 270 parks. Their baseline inventories covered vertebrates and vascular plants, which leaves many groups — adult aquatic insects, pollinators, land snails, terrestrial and aquatic mites — largely unstudied. BioBlitzes offer a low-cost way to reach them, and they serve the Park Service's goals of engaging the public and raising a new generation of park stewards. They also get a park's divisions — superintendent's office, resource management, maintenance, law enforcement, administration — talking to each other and to universities, schools, communities and nonprofits.

How an event works

• Each team has a leader and up to 10 volunteers. The leader must be a professional scientist from a reputable scientific or educational institution or a state or federal agency, as federal regulations (36 CFR 2.5) require for research in parks, and must hold a park research permit. The suggested minimum age for volunteers is 12.
• An orientation welcomes participants, covers safety and collects volunteer forms; then teams head out under their leaders.
• A lab, ideally with a camera-equipped microscope linked to a laptop and projector, lets participants and visitors see the finds. Workshops, exhibits and a public presentation of results can round out the day.
• Afterward, preliminary results go out in press releases and on social media, noting that identification continues and the species count will likely rise. Final results are published by the Park Service, entered into its IRMA and NPSpecies databases, and shared with news media and park newsletters.

Part A: groundwork for many events

1. Form an interdisciplinary team of park interpretation and natural resource staff, scientists from the park's Inventory and Monitoring network (every park with significant natural resources belongs to one of 32 networks) and local experts.
2. Find the gaps. Search the IRMA and NPSpecies databases, park publications and experts for what is known, then list understudied groups (such as snails or fungi) and habitats (such as springs). Take special care with listed rare species and sensitive habitats.
3. Write park guidance for research and collecting — what may be collected, where, when and how, and where specimens will be kept — based on NPS Management Policies, federal regulations and the Research Permit and Reporting System, plus animal-care rules for any vertebrates.
4. Build a list of scientists who could lead teams, from universities, federal and state agencies, referrals, past events, published authors and conferences, and tell them what is expected: getting a permit, leading fieldwork, handling specimens, reporting data promptly, and volunteering with little or no pay.
5. Plan for funding of travel, lodging, supplies, food, printing, specimen curation and transportation. Possible sources include park friends groups, the National Park Foundation, partner agencies and nonprofits, small park grants and science and education foundations.

The initial planning phase, which supports many BioBlitz events. National Park Service figure.

Part B: each event

The first steps in planning an individual event. National Park Service figure.

The month before the event through the day itself. National Park Service figure.

Locations of listed rare species or sensitive habitats found during an event should not be made public.

Two examples

BioBlitz events at George Washington Carver National Monument and Buffalo National River. National Park Service photo.

• George Washington Carver National Monument, Diamond, Missouri, September 27, 2014: focused on land snails, butterflies, moths, and grasshoppers and their relatives. In 8 hours, 16 volunteers collected 44 taxa, 36 of them never before recorded in the park.
• Buffalo National River, at Arkansas State University's Harp Research Field Station near Rush, Arkansas, October 18, 2014: focused on water mites. Thirteen volunteers collected 18 taxa, none previously identified in the park.

Surveying mammals at the 2014 BioBlitz at George Washington Carver National Monument. National Park Service photo.

Sources

• National Park Service, Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network: "Planning and Conducting a Small-scale Bioblitz Event," summarizing Hinsey and Johnson, Planning and Conducting a BioBlitz Event at a National Park Service Unit, Natural Resource Report NPS/HTLN/NRR—2015/935, and their report on the 2014 events, NPS/HTLN/NRDS—2015/778.
• The film and any audio are the National Park Service's own files, from the source page.