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GRYN I&M; Home Page
The Greater Yellowstone Network Inventory & Monitoring (GRYN I&M;)
program services three units of the National Park System:
- Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area,
- Grand Teton National Park (including John. D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway), and
- Yellowstone National Park.
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The GRYN, approved by charter in 2001, is one of 32 inventory and
monitoring networks nationwide challenged with
the responsibility of preparing Vital Signs Monitoring plans for our National Park Service (NPS).
The parks of the GRYN, sitting astride the Montana/Wyoming border, are
some of the crown jewels of the national park system. Yellowstone, the world's first
national park, includes the world's finest display of geothermal features. Grand Teton
holds a mountainscape so often photographed that almost every American can immediately recognize the outline
of the Tetons. Bighorn Canyon offers an unparalleled desert and water landscape out on the edge of the
Northern Rockies.
Ecosystems for these parks include alpine tundra,
lowland desert
steppe, and
almost everything in between. All three parks contain outstanding--and in many cases, rare--plant
and wildlife species. And further each park has important water, air, geologic,
biotic, and cultural
resources. All these features make the parks of the GRYN strongly deserving of NPS's charge to monitor
the long-term ecological health of its member parks.
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The pages of this website are designed to communicate GRYN's portion of the NPS I&M; program
to the general public, park advocates, park service employees, and federal and private sector
researchers. As such, the site contains reports, models, contacts,
and much more to better share our work and spur thought. Your comments on GRYN's I&M; program and/or
this website are most welcome (see the contributors page). |
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Why a nation-wide I&M program? NPS's overall mission is "to conserve unimpaired
the natural and cultural resources and values of
the national park system for the enjoyment of this and future generations".
To accomplish this mission, NPS has received several Congressional mandates
to inventory and monitor the natural resources entrusted to it. Among those Congressional directives
are these:
- "The Secretary shall undertake a program of inventory and monitoring of
National Park System resources to establish baseline information and to provide information on the
long-term trends in the condition of the National Park System."
- "Natural systems in the national park system, and the human influences upon them, will be monitored
to detect change. The Service will use the results of monitoring and research to understand
the detected change and to develop appropriate management actions ."
All 32 NPS Networks share the following fundamental goals:
- To inventory the natural resources and park ecosystems under NPS stewardship;
- To determine their nature and status;
- To monitor park ecosystems to better understand their dynamic nature and condition;
- To provide reference points for comparisons with other altered environments; and
- To integrate natural resources inventory & monitoring information into NPS planning, management and decision-making.
To accomplish these goals, the GRYN is focusing its efforts in three primary areas: data
management, inventories, and long-term monitoring. Information management is critical to bridging
the gap between science and management. Effective information management includes formatting
data for sharing and easy use, providing decision makers with information in a timely manner,
and aiding in public education. By providing park interpretation programs and the public
with information on current studies, management decisions, and trends captured by monitoring
programs, the Network hopes to increase public awareness of park activities as well as the
state of our natural resources.
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