Great Basin National Park's Natural Resources: The Condition Assessment

The Natural Resource Condition Assessment programme is a nationwide National Park Service effort to document the state of parks' key natural resources, by drawing together existing scientific data and knowledge across disciplines and mapping it. In 2012, Great Basin National Park staff met scientists from NatureServe, led by Pat Comer and Marion Reid, to decide which resources to evaluate. The information was gathered and rated with an ecological integrity assessment framework; SoundScience and the Park Service's Pacific West Region also contributed.

The verdict

Sixteen focal resources and stressors were assessed.

Resource by resource

In good condition

• Night skies — among the best in national parks of the lower 48, though domes of artificial light are visible from the park; the trend is downward.
• Rock glaciers — the steady shrinking of Lehman Glacier is a moderate concern and argues for monitoring the remaining rock glaciers for signs of climate change.
• Water quality and quantity — good and stable, though climate change, deposition of nitrogen, sulfur and mercury from the air, and groundwater pumping in nearby valleys are possible threats.
• Montane riparian woodland — evidence points to good condition, but recent ground-based measurements taken across the park are lacking.
• Bonneville cutthroat trout — restored to four creeks, with water quality, flow, stream insects and streamside woodland all supporting them. Threats include severe fire in their streamside vegetation, non-native trout, water changes from the Snake Creek pipeline and groundwater pumping outside the park, uneven channel habitat, and possibly climate change and genetic isolation.
• Cave and karst processes — good overall, but more data are needed on how cave visits by people and use by wildlife affect them.
• Springs — the seeps, springs and spring complexes look good, but the lack of long-term hydrological data points to a need for better monitoring.

Of moderate concern

• Air quality — nitrogen and sulfur deposition are rated moderate, and the park's aquatic ecosystems are sensitive to acidification; ozone, haze and mercury deposition are also of moderate concern.
• Viewsheds — regional haze obscures the long views across valleys to distant ranges that the interior West is known and valued for.
• Fire regime — three worries: too little fire in aspen, pinyon and juniper spreading into montane big sagebrush, and lower-elevation sagebrush steppe possibly turning into cheatgrass; the trend is downward.
• Aspen–mixed conifer forest — altered by decades of fire suppression; trend downward.
• Invasive annual grasses — a spatial model rates the risk high throughout the surrounding basins and the park's lower margin.
• Sagebrush steppe — lack of fire has left too much old growth, but the bigger concern is cheatgrass moving into the low-elevation upland type; trend downward.
• Climate change effects — models project a slight fall in annual streamflow, snowmelt up to 30 days earlier, and modest changes in snowpack and flow by 2060; the alpine environment is highly likely to face significant climate exposure. Trend downward.

Of significant concern

• Bighorn sheep — the herd seems stable but is far too small to survive in the long term.

Not rated

• Wild turkeys — introduced turkeys could damage park resources; monitoring is needed.

The report also includes a two-page briefing on each of the sixteen, summarising what is known, the resource's status and a discussion, and will help managers focus on priorities. The full report is on the NPS DataStore.

The assessment's summary table. Colour: green good, yellow moderate concern, red significant concern. Arrow: up improving, sideways unchanging, down deteriorating. Circle: heavy high confidence, light medium, dashed low. NPS.

Sources

• Gretchen Baker, ecologist, "Natural Resource Condition Assessments," The Midden (Great Basin National Park), vol. 16, no. 1, summer 2016, National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/natural-resource-condition-assessments.htm
• The full assessment: https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2225729