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Every day, National Park Service managers make decisions that can affect park resources for years. Yet for a long time many of them lacked even basic information about what was in their parks, let alone the state of the ecosystem. The Natural Resource Inventory & Monitoring (I&M) Program, created by Congressional mandate in 1998, set out to fix that.
Fishhook cactus in bloom; inventory and monitoring of vegetation communities are central to the program. Image from the National Park Service's Inventory & Monitoring program brief.
How it's organized
The program covers more than 270 parks with significant natural resources, grouped into 32 ecoregional networks that share core funding and professional staff. Each network monitors vital signs — a chosen set of physical, chemical and biological elements and processes that represent the health of park resources, the known or suspected effects of stressors, or things people especially value. Birds, soils and aquatic systems are among the most commonly monitored.
The 32 I&M networks. Network boundaries cross state lines — the Gulf Coast Network, for example, spans parts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Credit: National Park Service.
Goals
- Inventory park natural resources to learn what they are and their status.
- Monitor park ecosystems to understand how they change, and provide reference points for comparison with other places.
- Make inventory and monitoring standard practice across the park system, beyond traditional program and funding boundaries.
- Integrate the results into planning, management and decision-making.
- Share information with other natural resource organizations and build partnerships.
Although each I&M network monitors its own unique set of vital signs, many networks have vital signs in common. Birds, soils, and aquatic systems are examples of natural resources frequently monitored by the networks. ROBERT BENNETS; NPS; NPS.
What it has delivered
| Baseline inventories | Extensive, point-in-time surveys of plants, animals, air, water, soils, landforms and climate, delivered to more than 270 parks — the foundation for long-term monitoring. Inventories continue for the parks' highest-priority needs |
| Vital signs monitoring | Running in all 32 networks, covering physical resources and processes (air, water, climate, soils, fire, erosion), biological attributes (species, communities) and ecological processes (disturbance, productivity). Each network chose a modest set of vital signs by ecological significance, management relevance and legal mandate |
| Data management | State-of-the-art systems in every network, with sustained investment in database design, archiving and reporting |
The results feed resource management and planning, condition assessments, park plans, interpretation and outreach, and reach the public through websites, technical reports, resource briefs, journal articles, presentations and social media.
Looking ahead
Park managers face increasingly complex problems driven by landscape- and even global-scale forces such as climate change. The program's data are meant to give early warning of ecosystem changes, so managers can respond effectively and at lower cost.
Sources
Based on "Inventory & Monitoring Program Brief," National Park Service Inventory & Monitoring Division; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.
Licens: CC0 1.0 (allmän egendom) · Bearbetat efter www.nps.gov
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