Inventory Guidance and Templates for Cooperators and Parks

Researcher looking for the lichen, Pseudocyphellaria rainierensis, at Mt. Rainier National Park. NPS photo.

Overview

The Species Inventories Program facilitates the collection of new data about species occurrence, abundance, or distribution in National Park Service units to inform park management decisions and planning. Inventories are carried out by a project team consisting of stakeholders from park units, Inventory & Monitoring networks, regional offices, the Inventory Program, and external cooperators and partners.

Detailed Implementation Plan

Each inventory project requires the completion of a Detailed Implementation Plan (DIP) after selection and prior to funding. The DIP describes the project plan, methods, and analysis in enough detail to ensure the work will adequately address the park need. It also includes a final budget.

In most cases, the cooperator drafts the initial DIP. National Park Service staff provides input into the draft and discusses revisions with the cooperator. Once the project team is satisfied with the quality of the DIP, Inventory Program staff approves the final version and funding can be released.

Deliverables

Inventory product requirements include:

• A report in the NPS Science Report series.
• Data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that captures events, occurrences, and taxa, following a template. Data will be published as a reusable, well-documented, and (when appropriate) publicly accessible dataset in the NPS DataStore repository.
• A science communication product, such as a resource brief, web article, webinar, story map, poster, checklist, or other product(s) targeted to a less technical audience.

Other products may include geospatial data, decision support model, recorded webinar, as negotiated depending on project needs.

Templates and Project Example

Source: Data Store Collection 9500. To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.