ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING FOR PROTECTED AREAS: REVIEW AND PROSPECT D. SCOTT SLOCOMBE Department of Geography, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ont., Canada, N2L 3G1

(Received September 1990) Abstract. Monitoring activities in protected areas have a long history. Internal planning and management needs

early led to ecological inventories. More recently the increasing number and awareness of external threats to parks has led to a variety of monitoring programs. Efforts to use protected areas, and especially biosphere reserves, as ecological baselines, have reinforced this trend. And as protected areas are increasingly recognized to be islands with complex internal and regional interactions, holistic, systems approaches to inventory, monitoring, and assessment of their state are being developed. This paper begins by reviewing threats to parks and the origins and importance of inventory and monitoring activities. A review of resource survey methods follows. Ecosystem science and environmental monitoring are introduced as a foundation for consideration of several newer approaches to monitoring and assessing the state of natural environments. These newer approaches are stress/response frameworks, landscape ecology, ecosystem integrity, and state of the environment reporting. A final section presents some principles for monitoring the state of protected areas. Examples are drawn from experience with Canadian national parks.

The Canadian Parks Service (CPS), like many other protected areas* agencies, has long had a dual mandate: to protect and preserve areas of special scientific, ecological, or aesthetic value and to facilitate their enjoyment by the public. The frequent conflict between these objectives has encouraged development of ecological principles for protected areas management and methods for ecological inventory of protected areas. The CPS Natural Resource Management Process (Parks Canada, 1989), reflects this history in steps such as Preliminary Resource Reconnaissance and Evaluation, Basic Resource Inventory, and Resource Description and Analysis. Yet the CPS Natural Resource Management Process Manual treats monitoring very briefly and, in fact, suggests that 'resources are not monitored simply because they are dynamic'. This is probably not an unusual attitude among parks staff. The following pages provide an overview of experience with monitoring protected areas, and an exploration of ecosystem science and researches that could improve monitoring of protected areas. During the 1970s much attention was focused on the impacts of visitors on parks. The concept of carrying capacity (e.g. Sinden, 1976) reflected this. An overview of how well the U.S. had managed its national parks, based on ecological principles, was presented at the Second World Conference on National Parks. It emphasized the notion of carrying capacity and made no mention of external threats, while supporting a systems view of * Although the focus throughout is on national parks, much useful work has been done in other protected areas, notably biosphere reserves. Therefore I use the term 'protected area' generally, and the term 'national park' to be specific.

Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 21: 49-78, 1992. 9 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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parks that included change (Reed, 1974). The beginnings of concern for external threats to protected areas go back as far. An early thesis on pollution problems in U.S. national parks found, somewhat to the author's surprize, that external sources were a greater threat than internal sources in many parks (Waisgerber, 1975). During the 1980s more and more attention has been directed at threats to protected areas, such as pollution, exotic introductions, and landuse, that originate outside their boundaries (e.g. Janzen, 1986). Adding to the growing interest in monitoring and the dynamics of change in protected areas are new, 'holistic', criteria for park planning and management. On August 18, 1988 the Canadian Parliament passed Bill C-30, thereby amending the National Parks Act to, among other things, give first priority to maintenance of ecological integrity. Defining, measuring, and managing for ecological integrity are all problematic. Yet clearly environmental monitoring, that is much more than simple resource description, should be a central part of protected areas planning and management.

Protected Areas Monitoring: Issues and Approaches The classic statement of the imperturbable perfection of natural processes justifying a static, internally oriented, hands-off view of park management is Houston (1971). But by the late 1970s there was an emerging view (by no means limited to parks people) of parks and the natural environment as systems. Parks were seen as open (e.g. Giacomini and Romani, 1978), and their dynamics were seen to be changing, involving various forces in the creation of evolving landscapes that require site-specific planning and management (Dolan et al. 1978). This open-system view put 'man in nature', recognizing that park ecosystems often extend beyond park boundaries (cf. Wilcove and May, 1986). It tended to emphasize 'resource surveys as a foundation of park management' (Polunin and Eidsvik, 1979). In Canada, resource inventories for parks have been policy since the 1960s. While resource surveys have become standard practice, they have not in general explicitly built in concerns for change, openness, or monitoring (resource surveys are discussed in detail in the next section). The narrow (structural) descriptiveness of resource surveys has certainly not provided all the knowledge of natural or other processes that might be desired. The shift toward modern management that 'values processes as well as objects and recognizes change and disturbance as integral to park maintenance' (Bratton, 1985) is far from complete. An evaluation of the state ofU.S. Parks (U.S. National Parks Service, 1980) identified many perceived internal and external threats, but an analysis of the report suggested that documentation was very poor for both. The analysis recommended development of information baseline standards, biological monitoring, and biological indices (Lemons, 1986). And detailed studies of the management history of Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks provide many examples of the failure of a static, closed system approach to management (Chase 1987; Runte 1990). Partly in response to Chase's work, a recent commission on research and resource management in the U.S. national parks recommended 'developing and using the concept of ecosystem management' and 'implementing a research program'. Establishing integrated inventory and monitoring programmes, including long-term sites, was seen as a key step for meeting these goals (Gordon, 1989).

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The 1970s and 1980s have seen much research into the structure and functioning of ecosystems in general; and into ecological monitoring. Such knowledge could provide the foundation for 'ecosystem' oriented management of protected areas. Extensive programs of air pollution monitoring in the protected areas provide some examples of park application of these methods. The most extensive areas monitoring programmes are likely found in U.S. biosphere reserves, but there too 'baseline d a t a . . , are more comprehensive than environmental monitoring data, which in turn are much more extensive than data stemming from ecological research' (Turner and Gregg, 1983). Possibly the most significant result of better understanding of ecosystem functioning and the effects of pollution on ecosystems is the stress/response framework (Rapport and Friend, 1979). This approach seeks to discover the responses of ecosystems to particular stresses, in an explicit analogy with human physiology and medicine. As protected areas are usually stressed ecosystems, the approach is potentially useful to park managers. The relative significance of internal and external threats varies from protected area to protected area. Internal were seen to have the edge in national parks in Lemons, 1986; external in biosphere reserves in Turner and Gregg, 1983. Some evidence also suggests that external threats such as pollution, mining, and exotics are more frequent in more developed nations' parks. Internal threats such as illegal entry, removal of fauna and flora, and fire take on greater significance in less developed nations' parks (Machlis and Tichnell, 1985, 1987). More detailed studies of threats to parks in the neotropics found that specific threats are often associated with landuses surrounding a park (Machlis and Neumann, 1987; Neumann and Machlis, 1989). The authors argue that the land-transforming activities which threaten park resources can best be understood by incorporating the regional social and political-economic contexts in the analysis'. This suggests the relevance of landscape ecology approaches to assessing change in an entire landscape. Landscape ecology seeks to include both the natural environment and the effects of human activities on it. Twenty years ago Keith Caldwell (1970) wrote of the ecosystem as a policy criterion. The ecosystems approach, as Caldwell saw it, is holistic, based on science and administration rather than precedent and law, and reflects the potential for change, interconnectedness, and self-regeneration of ecosystems. For Caldwell ecosystem integrity and survival could provide 'a source of principles by which conflicts over resource uses might have been mediated'. It would provide a more flexible approach then the more usual focus on the 'Natural Resource' part of nature. Today there is a resurgence of interest in the idea of ecosystem integrity with two main roots. First, the stress-response research noted earlier has led to discussion of ecosystem 'health'. Second, detailed, field biological work that has led to development of measures of biological and ecological integrity for environmental management. Improving basic knowledge about protected area resources and change in them will contribue to more than just management of internal and external threats. It could also aid impact assessments, and screening of park service activities themselves (cf. Elkin and Smith, 1988). And in the long-term, in the context of protected areas as laboratories, as refuges, as 'natural' baselines against which to compare the rest of the increasingly

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developed world, historical time-series, long-term studies, and scientific monitoring programmes are critical (Sinclair, 1987). State of the environment reporting (GEMS, 1989; Elkin, 1987) provides a framework for linking all these concepts, methods, and goals. By synthesizing contributions from each of these areas, this paper concludes with principles for assessing the state of protected area environments.

Resource Surveys Resource surveys of different sorts have a long history in resource management in general, and in protected areas management specifically. Their importance follows from the effort to manage protected areas in ecologically and ecosystemically appropriate ways. A range of data are seen as necessary for assessing management needs and the impacts of various actions. Resource surveys of particular protected areas complement (and sometimes inform) generalized land classification schemes such as the Canada Land Inventory (see Scace, 1981 for an overview of land classification schemes and methods). Land classification schemes seek to outline areas with similar biological, physical, and sometimes cultural characteristics. Their principal application in protected areas management has been in development of biogeographical classifications for ecosystems as an aid to selection of representative areas for protection. Terrestrial environments have been classified by Udvardy (1975, 1984); coastal and marine environments by Ray et al. (1984). Such classifications have a tendency to miss unique or localized features such as caves, rare species or features, because they are based on generalized zones of similarity. This limits their usefulness in most ongoing planning and management, although some specialized classifications have been developed (e.g. Fricker and Forbes, 1988 for coasts; Hebrank, 1989 for geology). Resource surveys for protected areas seek to elaborate on detailed characteristics of the study area. Resource surveys do, however, retain a geographical emphasis. This distinguishes them from textual information databases, whose usefulnes is often limited by lack of data on spatial relationships (cf. Freeman and Smith, 1986). Resource survey data are usually presented in map form, increasingly in maps produced from a geographical information system (GIS). The rest of this section compares the content of several different resource survey systems, first for terrestrial and then for aquatic environments, before concluding with a brief comparison of their ability to synthesize information and provide for tracking of change in the environment.

Terrestrial Resource Surveys There is an extensive literature on the development of resource surveys in Canadian National Parks. They appear to have had their origins in land classification activities, often of the Canadian Forestry Service and Agriculture Canada. Early on, however, Parks Canada developed its own program of ecological inventories (cf. Parks Canada, 1980) and sought to place inventory and monitoring activities in the context of natural resources research in parks (cf. Cowan, 1977). Most national parks had some form of inventory

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completed or underway by the late 1970's. These early inventories were usually based on land classification concepts and approaches and provided 'first and foremost, a classification and description of major site variables including soil, physical environment, vegetation, and aquatic ecosystem variables' (Parks Canada, 1980). But such surveys frequently fail in key areas, such as historical ecology and monitoring to help understand the dynamics of park processes - especially sensitivity to disturbance (Nelson, 1978). By the late 1970's various others were writing on the specific resource survey needs of protected areas. Polunin and Eidsvik (1979) provide one biophysically oriented example. During the 1980's Parks Canada developed and refined its Natural Resource Management Process. The resource survey portion of the process culminates in development of the Resource Description and Analysis (RDA) for each park. The RDA includes a wide range of biological, physical, and cultural data. The 1980's also saw development of an approach intended explicitly for protected areas planning and management, and to include biophysical and cultural data. The AbioticBiotic-Cultural (ABC) resource survey methodology collects both structural and functional data (Bastedo et al., 1984; Grigoriew et al., 1985; Nelson et al., 1988). The ABC method is significant for its comprehensive presentation of data, multi-level mapping and integration of data (more on which later), clear identification of significance and constraints, and flexibility in the use of interpretive indices. Other development of the approach has also illustrated its usefulness for identifying possible institutional arrangements for significant resources and areas. Many resource inventory methods have been developed for different uses. I make no effort to survey all here. A comprehensive survey and synthesis can be found in Conant et al. (1983). A summary of their recommendations is presented for comparison with the other approaches mentioned above in Table I. Also included in Table I are the categories considered in Turner and Gregg's (1983) survey of scientific activities in biosphere reserves.

Aquatic Resource Surveys The literature on resource surveys in the aquatic environment is much smaller than for terrestrial protected areas (but see Conant et al., 1983). This reflects the lower incidence of aquatic protected areas. On the other hand, perhaps because of more obvious impacts of pollution, and legislative limitations on effluents and monitoring requirements, aquatic work has often been more detailed, and included a stronger emphasis on ecosystem characteristics, processes and change (cf. National Academy of Sciences, 1990). Resource surveys and monitoring in freshwater are more similar to marine work, than to terrestrial. Many of the following marine examples have applications in freshwater systems. More detailed comments on freshwater systems can be found below in the environmental monitoring, stress/response, and ecological integrity sections. A good example of aquatic survey work is Ray (1976) who emphasized ten distinctions between the nature of marine and terrestrial ecosystems: their size and mobility, the predominance of water current as an environmental factor, the importance of ecotones

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and transition zones; the existence of often subtle boundaries; dimensionality in the living hydrosphere; physiological continuity; the inverted biomass pyramid; sink, downstream, and short-circuit effects; the danger of eutrophication; and dynamism. He recommended research on ecological and social factors, factors important for public health, techniques for increasing productivity and production, factors related to industrial activities, and factors related to the carrying capacity of reserves for human activity. Throughout, Ray suggests an emphasis on ecosystem functions and processes. Characteristics to be monitored include nutrient flows, diversity and abundance, indicator species, resilience, migration, assimilative capacity, contaminant inputs and accumulation, restoration and environmental enhancement, pollutant plume behaviour, flushing times, and possible synergies. Ray does not provide a detailed outline for a resource TABLE I Comparison of resource survey frameworks Biosphere Reserve Survey (Turner and Gregg 1983)

Parks Data-Sheet (Polunin and Eidsvik 1 9 8 3 )

Resource Description and Analysis (Canadian Parks Service, 1989)

Climate: temperature, Physical components precipitation, wind, Climate anomalies, topo effects Geomorphology bedrock superficial deposits Water: drainage, hazards, quality, flow, soil landforms timing, ice Water Bedrock: geology, petrology, drainage basins lithology, presence of fossilvolume and flow bearing strata physical characteristics Surficial Materials: landforms, chemical and biological origin, types and phenomena: hot springs, etc. description of materials Biotic components Soils: soil orders and Plant Life major soil characteristics phytosociological characterFlora: description of 2. Environmental monitoring istics terrestrial and aquatic A. Aerial imagery tolerance of communities communities, distribution B. Aquatic ecosystems long-range stability Fauna: occurrence and distribution C. Disturbances rare and endemic plants of terrestrial and aquatic D. Geologic features Animal wildlife species by habitat E. Macroclimate species F. Monitoring networks distribution and movements High-Visibility and Sensitive Resources: behavioural traits number, distribution, status 3. Ecological research Rare and endangered species Archaeology-History: A. Vegetation and ecosystems Man location, description, and B. Wildlife anthropology economics documentation of major events C. Soil ecology history political aspects Past & Present Land Uses: history sociology of ownership, settlement, 4. Effectiveness as a conservation exploitation and transportation unit Ecological History and Processes: A. Ecosystems past and future forces in B. Specific groups of biota evolution of park resources C. Perceived threats 1. Adequacy of baseline information A. Aerial photography and imagery B. Aquatic ecosystems C. Bibliography D. Data storage and management E. Disturbances F. Fauna G. Flora H. Geologic features I. Macroclimate

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Table ! (Continued)

ABC Resource Survey Methodology (Grigoriew et al., 1985)

Resource Inventory and Baseline Study (Conant et al., 1983)

Synthesis: sampling, remote sensing, integrated resource inventories, GIS's, subsistence, systems analysis. Aquatic ecosystems: QUANTITY AND QUALITY; PHYSICAL PROPERTIES such as climate, precipitation, tides, light; CHEMICAL PROPERTIES such as pH, dissolved gases and solids, particulates; BIOTIC PROPERTIES such as benthos, plankton, fish, vegetation; FUNCTIONAL PROPERTIES such as nutrient cycling, productivity, water balance, ecosystem indices. Soils: climate, soil, drainage and hydrology, topography and vegetation, soil degradation, indigenous systems of classification. Plants (national or regional): PHYSIOGNOMY - forms and strata, SPECIES dominant, indicator and economic; PRODUCTIVITY; SUCCESSIONAL STATUS - related Level 11 - Interpretive indices to potential, major controlling (reflect resource values and management considerations) factors identified; CULTURAL USAGE; WATERSHED ROLES. Abiotic: uniqueness or representativeness, Wildlife: SELECTED SPECIES - economic ecological importance, geomorphic hazard value, ecological importance, potential, terrain sensitivity. social value, rarity; PHYSICAL Biotic: faunal and community diversity, ENVIRONMENT - climate, physiography, community uniqueness, faunal habitat geology; BIOTIC ENVIRONMENTdependence, vegetation recoverability, food, cover, water, etc.: fire susceptibility. habitat condition and trends; Cultural: historical uniqueness or CULTURAL ACTIVITIES and representativeness, archaeol, importance, INSTITUTIONS aesthetic or symbolic value, rate of economic, social, legal and political, land use change, land use interactions, indigenous practices. environmental impact. Level I - R a w data

Abiotic Structural: landforms slope, relief, drainage, soils. Functional: geomorphic processes such as erosion, deposition, avalanches, thermokarst action. Biotic Structural: vegetation communities composition, coverage, age, fire history - Biotic Land Units. Functional: areas of high plant productivity, critical feeding, migration, winter habitats for wildlife. Cultural Structural: past and present land use, e.g. archaeological and historical sites, settlements, land and stream alterations, transportation and communication facilities. Functional: corridors and activity nodes indicating spatial and temporal patterns of land use or associated cultural processes.

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survey, b u t his scheme certainly a p p e a r s to have h a d s o m e influence in actual m a r i n e p a r k p r o g r a m m e s : in U.S. m a r i n e sanctuaries (e.g. D o b b i n a n d L e m a y , 1985) a n d in A u s t r a l i a ' s G r e a t Barrier Reef M a r i n e Park (e.g. Kelleher, 1985). A m o r e detailed, c o m p u t e r - b a s e d , Coastal I n f o r m a t i o n System has been developed by the Geological Survey o f C a n a d a (Fricker a n d F o r b e s , 1988). While the system has a geophysical bias it might well be a d a p t e d to m o r e general, parks-oriented, purposes.

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Analyzing Resource Surveys Resource survey information is intended for use. Some uses require simple description and inventory. Others require some synthesis of raw data, some method to make data more accessible and meaningful. The CPS resource description and analysis process calls for Synthesis and Evaluation steps after the basic data collection and analysis. These steps are intended to, for example, identify critical wildlife habitat, locate and identify habitat requirements for endangered species, identify natural hazard zones; and locate sensitive features, identify major issues, identify areas with high potential for certain activities, or identify culturally important features. However, no explicit method for doing this is given. The ABC resource survey methodology's explicit combination of mapping and interpretive indices and criteria provides one such method. But mapping and qualitative criteria are not always sufficient. Some applications, assessing ecolaogical integrity included, require a system that is interactive and includes time-series data. A strong conclusion of Eagles' (1988) study of the use of biophysical inventories in Canadian national park planning and management was that, while RDA information was useful and generally complete, a computer-based, GIS, and/or monitoring programme was/would be more useful. These sorts of consideration lead away from simple resource surveys or inventories toward integrated programmes that add monitoring to inventory, and look deeper into the interaction and operation of biophysical (and cultural) processes in the landscape. This implies an extension of resource inventory activites to ecosystem analysis and monitoring. Habitat surveys and inventories that seek measures of suitability and variation are an intermediate step between the resource surveys of this section and the ecological monitoring of the next (cf. Cooperfider et al., 1986; Durham et al., 1985; Harcombe, 1984).

Ecosystems and EnvironmentalMonitoring Environmental monitoring in protected areas presupposes description and understanding of the environment and especially of the natural environment. The importance of understanding ecological processes in park management has been recognized by many authors (e.g. Ovington, 1984 on the effects of prescribed burning and grazing). Most commonly, ecosystems provide the spatial dimension (see Agee and Johnson, 1988 on ecosystem management for parks and wilderness), and monitoring the temporal dimension, of efforts to understand the natural environment. This section provides, first, a selective survey of the literature of ecosystem science that could be useful in the design of a monitoring program and, second, a general introduction to environmental monitoring. A later section details experience with actual monitoring in national parks and other protected areas. The emphasis here is on ecosystems. Thus I do not discuss population biology (see any standard ecology text such as Ricklefs, 1990), nor do I cover the physical environment in any detail, though it is a part of ecosystems and requires monitoring (e.g. Swanson et al., 1988) and, as with resource surveys, should be covered by any integrated monitoring plan.

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Nor has an extensive survey of the application of ecological theory to environmental planning and management been undertaken, though it could in part contribute (e.g. di Castri et aL, 1984; Polunin, 1986). The literature reviewed here deals with both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Monitoring design must bear in mind that, as noted above, there are significant differences between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems relating to the scale and timing of internal structures and dynamics (Steele, 1985).

Ecosystem Science The importance of ecosystems in modern ecology has, of course, a complex history and rationale. To simplify, one may say that it is a function of growing interest in ecological life histories and strategies; in species behaviours, roles, and relationships; and in ecological systems as dynamic systems (May and Seger, 1986). At the extreme this leads to seeking to identify 'vital signs' for the health of the entire earth (e.g. forest cover, topsoil on cropland, desert area, lake health, species diversity, groundwater quality, climate, sea level, and the ozone layer: Brown and Flavin, 1988). More prosaically it takes one beyond population biology and species ecology to the functioning and dynamics of ecological systems (cf. Holling, 1987). This is a young, rapidly growing and changing field. The following survey is selective, but indicative. One key area of research is into the effects of spatial scale. Processes at different spatial and temporal scales interact to influence the present and future state of the environment (di Castri and Hadley, 1988). Local and regional processes, and history, have been seen to have a strong role in determining community diversity (Ricklefs, 1987). There has also been much progress in study of the dynamics of ecosystems. Ecosystem processes are seen as much less orderly than they were in Odum (1969). Natural and anthropogenic disturbance are now seen as important if not critical (Mooney and Godron, 1983). The evolution of ecosystems produces complexity as much as stability (cf. di Castri, 1989; Ferrari and Ceccherelli, 1989). Nonlinear phenomena with random fluctuations and chaotic dynamics have been observed in ecological phenomena (May, 1986). Early notions of diversity and stability have been modified by discussions of resilience (Holling, 1973), and cycles of ecological exploitation, conservation, creative destruction, and renewal (Holling, 1986). Today, studies of ecosystem stability focus more on nutrient dynamics and food-webs, than on species diversity as such (see Yodzis, 1981; DeAngelis et al., 1989). Systems-oriented methodologies for studying energy and other flows have been developed (Odum, 1983). Controversy continues over whether ecosystems are cybernetic (i.e. information networks, feedback systems) with Engelberg and Boyarsky (1979) and Oksanen (1988) against, and Patten and Odum (1981) for. Other work on the hierarchical and network nature of ecosystems tends to support a cybernetic, systems view which links well with modern stability analyses (e.g. Allen and Starr 1982; Edson et al., 1981; O'Neill et al., 1986; Pilette, 1989; Ulanowicz, 1986). Much of this research uses models to simulate the dynamics of ecosystems with, for example, Markov and multivariate methods that take account of uncertainty (e.g. Jeffers, 1988; Jorgenson, 1987).

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Although ecosystem theory and studies are still young they can contribute to what one review saw as the goals of ecosystems research: 'the description of structures and functions and the understanding of the mechanisms controlling the dynamics, so that predictions can be made of the behaviour of ecosystems if input conditions or internal parameters are modified' (Schulze and Zwrlfer, 1987: 416). This is, of course, also a principal goal of environmental monitoring.

EnvironmentalMonitoring This section deals with approaches to monitoring. It doesn't address techniques of collecting data such as soil and wildlife surveys, aerial photography and remote sensing (see Clarke, 1986). But it does address even more fundamental issues such as what to monitor in order to develop a sense of the state of an ecosystem. Much of our environmental monitoring experience derives from efforts to monitor pollution and its effects. It is a central challenge in park management, and throughout environmental management generally, to shift some of our emphasis from compliance monitoring of threats to parks and environmental change (cf. National Academy of Sciences, 1990). The methodology of monitoring is well nigh as important as the choice of characteristics to be monitored. This is especially so for monitoring for environmental management because it is implicit that information gathered (on change) will result in management actions. Developing effective, justifiable management prescriptions from environmental monitoring presumes identification of cause/effect linkages. Making valid cause and effect associations is a difficult business. Gilbertson (1989) reviews experience with cause/effect linkages in the Great Lakes Basin. One's justification for linking a particular cause and a particular effect depends on the consistency, strength, and specificity of the association; the time sequence in which 'cause' and 'effect' occur; and the coherence and biological plausibility of the explanation of the link. Cairns and Dickson (1980) discuss distinctions between surveys, surveillance, and monitoring, and outline four approaches to monitoring: behavioral responses, residue analysis, indicator species, and community structure. Izrael and Munn (1986) provide a general introduction to issues and uses of four types of monitoring: physical, chemical, biological-ecological, and socio-economic. They also outline key considerations in design of a monitoring system such as the questions to be asked, the desired resolution and accuracy, the sources of error, spatial and temporal variability in the monitored system, practical constraints, and design flexibility. A similar, and useful, discussion of bounding, quantification, modelling, prediction, and study design can be found in Beanlands and Duinker (1983). The stress/response framework discussed in the next section is a behavioral response approach. Landscape ecological approaches, discussed below, address community structure at various scales. Davies (1988) provides a description of a typical monitoring programme aimed at getting qualitative data on fish community structure in Canadian lakes. Other approaches, derived more directly from the ecosystem theory noted above, may be best suited to monitoring ecosystems.

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One approach focuses on ecosystem flows and functioning. For example Breymeyer (1981 ) suggests that a minimal program for ecosystem monitoring should include tracking the flow of main contaminants through key parts of the ecosystem, measurement of production and degradation of organic matter, and description of soil and plant cover sufficient to permit integration of the area into a larger biogeophysical classification. Ausmus (1984) argues for monitoring of nutrient pools and flows to determine responses and change due to chemical contamination. Development of retrospective, baseline data complement such approaches (e.g. Noss, 1985; Tuthill et al., 1982). The use of indicators in monitoring appears to be gaining popularity. Early approaches to trying to identify the most sensitive, or most critical, species have been criticized on grounds ranging from the difficulty of identifying critical species to the greater suitability of monitoring whole systems (e.g. Cairns, 1975; Cairns, 1986). More general indices of ecosystem sensitivity based on community characteristics have been developed (e.g. Kushlan, 1983; Landres et al., 1988; Smith et al., 1975; Suffling, 1980). The most developed work with indicators is likely in the Great Lakes Basin. There, two types of indicator organisms were orginally identified: those with narrow tolerances for most environmental properties (which isn't equivalent to sensitivity) and those with relatively broad tolerances for many environmental properties. The focus was initially on the first type, and the Lake trout was identified as a key indicator species (Ryder and Edwards, 1985). Colborn et aZ, (1990) present a more general list of indicators: air quality, surface water quality, contaminated sediments, groundwater; body burdens of toxics, population status, habitat, fisheries; forests, wetlands, soil erosion, agricultural productivity, shorelines; human health, and economic conditions. Some approaches work toward integrating the ecosystem functioning and indicator approaches. Munn (1988) discusses the use of historical reconstructions, biological indicators (including statistical and time-series analyses), and identification stresses, feedbacks, etc. for early-warning of environmental change. Others have explored the implications of models of (aquatic) ecosystem resilience for monitoring (Fiering, 1982a, h); and the use of models of ecosystem functioning to improve the accuracy of pollution monitoring (Radford and West, 1986). A common difficulty in protected areas and other monitoring is the linking of knowledge of natural ecosystems with knowledge of threats to them. The stress/response approach holds a central position here.

Ecosystem Stresses and Responses Stress/response approaches derive from efforts to provide a focus for the study, prediction, and understanding of perturbations of natural ecological systems and their responses (Barrett et al., 1976). There is often an explicit analogy with medical and human physiological studies of stress (see Rapport et al., 1981) which proceed from the early recognition of stages an organism goes through in coping with stress (alarm, resistance, exhaustion) through steps of diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment (e.g. recording of symptoms, vital signs, provisional diagnosis, clinical tests, prognosis, treatment). This

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results in new directions in ecology based on concepts such as seeking early warning, preclinical indicators; achilles heels; epidemiology, wound healing, and preadaptations to stress regimes. Such approaches focus on the ecosystem, as an entity that normally is quite persistent and as one that integrates many dimensions of the biophysical environment. Thus one may speak of ecosystem health. (Stress/response approaches to land and landscape may also be useful; see Neimanis et al., 1983; Rump and Hillary, 1987; Simpson, 1989). There are three principal ways to assess ecosystem health: identifying critical characteristics that distinguish healthy and sick ecosystems (vital signs), measuring the ability of ecosystems to recover from stresses, and identification of risk factors (Rapport, 1989). Efforts to identify vital signs have been most common and various lists of expected trends, generally in terms ofenergetics, nutrient cycling, community structure, and system-level trends have been generated (Odum, 1985; Rapport et al., 1985; Sheehan, 1984). Table II presents some characteristics of ecosystems that various authors have identified as reflecting stresses and responses. Identification of risk factors has also proceeded apace. It often has links to studies of ecosystem responses, and resilience (Holling, 1986). Such classifications usually separate natural (e.g. wildfire, hurricanes, floods, volcanos, glaciation, natural minerals or acidification) from anthropogenic stresses (e.g. gaseous air pollutants, toxic elements, acidification, forest decline, oil pollution, excessive nutrients, pesticides, forest harvesting, extinction, warfare). Although this work does not survey the vast, detailed literature on ecosystem responses to stress (Freedman, 1989 is superb; also Sheehan et al., 1984) given known threats to a protected area that literature would assist identification of vital signs to monitor. In particular it is clear that there are some key differences between terrestrial and aquatic systems (e.g. Gulati, 1989; Schindler, 1988; 1989). It also appears that while the stress concept may not be necessary for detailed demographic, genetic, or biochemical studies of populations, it can contribute a broader evolutionary perspective to studies of the structure and dynamics of communities and ecosystems (Grime, 1989). Combined attention to vital signs and to ecosystem responses leads to more integrative approaches to ecosystem health: seeking indicators of ecosystem integrity - both structural and functional. Rapport (1989) suggests ecosystem integrity depends on a small number of critical structures and functions. Symptoms of breakdown can then be narrowed to a half dozen: reduced primary productivity, loss of nutrients, loss of sensitive species, increased instability in component populations, increased disease prevalence, all conditions that favour smaller life forms, and increased circulation of contaminants. Schaeffer et al., (1988) provide both a table of relationships between critical ecosystem characteristics and measures, and a set of guidelines for choosing criteria for ecosystem health. These guidelines suggest that measures of health should not depend on either the presence, absence, or condition of a single species, or a census or inventory of a large number of species; should reflect knowledge of normal successional or other expected natural sequential ecosystem changes; and that measures of health do not have to be a single number, should have a defined range, be monotonic, and vary in a systematic and

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TABLE II Comparison of characteristics for stress/response monitoring Odum, 1985 Energetics 1. Community respiration increases 2. P:R becomes unbalance 3. P:B and R:B increase 4. Use of imported energy increases 5. Unused primary production increases

Rapport et al., 1985

Sheehan, 1984

Changes in nutrient cycling Changes in primary productivity Changes in species diversity System retrogression Changed size distribution of species Disease incidence

Individuals and populations Behavioural Biochemical Morphological Physiological Altered growth and reproduction Life history Population interactions

Nutrient cycling 6. Increased nutrient turnover 7. Horizontal transport increases, Schindler, 1987 vertical cycling decreases 8. Nutrient loss increases relative species abundance Community structure opportunistic species favoured 9. r-strategists increase taxonomic changes more 10. Size of organisms decreases important than diversity indices 11. Lifespans decrease short lifecycle, low dispersal 12. Food chains shorten species most affected 13. Species diversity decreases life table parameters of such species sensitive indicators General system-level trends community structure changes due 14. Ecosystem becomes more open to keystone predator losses 15. Autogenic successional trends reverse 16. Efficiency of resource use decreases 17. Parasitism, etc. increases; mutualism, etc, decreases 18. Functional properties are more robust than structural properties

Ecosystem structure and dynamics Abundance and biomass Loss of species with unique functions Species richness Species lists Indicator species Dominance patterns Diversity and similarity Spatial structure Inertia Elasticity Amplitude Hysteresis and malleability Persistence Terrestrial succession Aquatic ecosystem recovery Ecosystem functional changes Material and energy movement Decomposition and element cycles Productivity and respiration Food webs and functional regulation

discernible way. S h e e h a n (1984) provides detailed discussions o f stress effects o n ecosystem structure, d y n a m i c s , a n d functioning. Others have looked at r e q u i r e m e n t s for professional use o f stress/response approaches in i m p a c t assessment (Barrett, 1978) a n d at the p o t e n t i a l for use o f one species g r o u p as global indicators o f a wide variety o f potential effects o f g l o b a l w a r m i n g (Parsons, 1989). Overall, the stress-response a p p r o a c h c o n t r i b u t e s m o s t to design o f m o n i t o r i n g f o ; detection o f effects f r o m k n o w n activities at a n ecosystem level. The next section looks at the structure a n d f u n c t i o n i n g o f the ecosystem context: landscapes.

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LandscapeApproaches Landscape approaches combine both qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitatively they derive from a broad concern with how human societies and activities have modified the natural landscape (cf. Sauer, 1963). More practically they may seek to understand how the present landscape is a function of past natural and human events and processes. Such an approach can certainly be of use in park planning (e.g. Battin and Nelson, 1978, Nelson, 1976, Scace, 1967), perhaps in the analysis and synthesis stages of a Resource Description and analysis. Landscape approaches are strengthened in this context by their strong historical, anthropological, archaeological, and human ecological roots. More recently landscapes have been seen as spatial, ecological systems whose pattern is affected by a variety of ecological and other processes. This pattern, and change in it, may be quantifiable. Attention is focused on landscape structure and pattern. Concepts such as patches, corridors, matrix, network, heterogeneity, contrast, and grain size describe a structure that is modified by natural processes such as geomorphology, life forms, soil development, natural disturbances, and human processes from harvesting to construction to pollution. Movements and flows within a landscape can lead to discussion of landscape stability, dynamics and change (Forman and Godron, 1986 is the standard work from a North American perspective; Vink, 1983 a standard work from the European school). Although the roots of landscape ecological approaches are strongly in holistic, systems views, the distinction between focussing on structure versus process is still present. Emphasizing the ways spatial pattern affects processes leads to quantitative measurements of landscape characteristics such as richness, evenness, patchiness, dominance, and nearest neighbour probabilities which affect heterogeneity and disturbance, movement and persistence of organisms, redistribution of matter and nutrients, and large-scale ecosystem processes (Turner, 1989). By applying general systems, cybernetic and selforganizing theories to large-scale landscape transformation it is possible to elucidate processes leading to catastrophic change or a self-maintaining landscape (e.g. on the Mediterranean see Naveh, 1987; Naveh and Liebermann, 1984). Assessing the effects of processes on landscape patterns requires first of all an assessment of what the expected pattern in the absence of the process would have been (Gardner et al., 1987). Other work has observed that anthropogenic features in a landscape commonly have straight line boundaries (Euclidean geometry) while natural processes produce more complex shapes and boundaries (fractal, in fact), suggesting that complex landscapes be described by a combination of landscape elements, structure, geometry, and dynamics (Milne 1988). A recent Canadian survey provides examples of the application of landscape ecology approaches to phenomena as diverse as land classification, climate change, agriculture, forest dynamics and disturbance, landscape aesthetics, and wildlife habitat (Moss, 1988). Table III summarizes several outlines of key system characteristics from a landscape ecology perspective. There have been a variety of applications of landscape ecology to protected areas. White (1987) discussed the implications of natural disturbance and patch dynamics for reserve design. Balser et al. ( 1981) presented a series of'filters' for evaluation of protected

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area sites in cultural landscapes. Many were derived from landscape ecology. Cultural landscapes were specifically studied by Melnick (1984) to produce a definition of integrity as the capacity of a district to represent its significance - an approach that has strong roots in ideas of landscape. Romme and Knight (1982) applied landscape ecology to Yellowstone National Park and observed cyclic changes in landscape diversity at a I00 km 2 scale. Island biogeographic theory (IBT; MacArthur and Wilson, 1967) has long been applied to issues of the size and shape of protected areas, and is implicit in much of current landscape ecology. Schonewald-Cox and Bayless (1986)provide a particularly interesting melding of IBT and landscape ecology in their discussion of protected area boundaries, edges, and vulnerability. Most recently island biogeographic theory is drawing attention to species losses from national parks (Glenn and Nudds, 1989; Newmark, 1987), although landscape ecology can undoubtedly say much more about ultimate causes of losses, and about what needs to be monitored. A good example of this, which contrasts with the complex and often controversial conclusions oflBT (e.g. Boecklen, 1986; Diamond, 1975; Margules etal., 1982; Margules and Nicholls, 1988; Soul6 1986), is in the area of design of individual and multiple protected areas. It has been argued, for example, that a system of reserves that protects diversity within habitats, between habitats (i.e. edge), and in the regional landscape will preserve more ecological diversity than one that seeks to maximize local habitat diversity (Noss, 1983). This suggestion has been expanded into a scheme that seeks both to protect and buffer sensitive species and habitats, and to encourage movement of individuals, species, energy, nutrients, and habitats through space and time (Noss and Harris, 1986). Landscape ecological approaches integrate ecological structures and processes with stresses on, and responses of, ecosystems to generate description and understanding of entire landscapes. This could be a step toward generating measures of the integrity and state of entire national parks of landscapes.

Ecological Integrity Ecological, or ecosystem, integrity is an idea receiving increasing amounts of attention today. There is no widely agreed upon qualitative or quantitative definition, and the concept is complicated by the existence of conceptions of individual, human integrity (cf. Serafin et al., 1989). The idea has been explored for aquatic communities by James R. Karr and others in great detail. The only general application of the term in an environmental management context that the author is aware of is in the Great Lakes Basin. Rigorous application of the concept to terrestrial systems does not yet seem to have occured; development of concepts and measures of ecological integrity for terrestrial systems must be a priority. Karr's work has aimed at developing a more integrative indicator of freshwater ecosystem integrity than simple measurements of water quality (cf. Ballantine and Guarraia, 1975). The core of his work is development of an Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI) that is a composite of measures of species composition and richness, trophic composition,

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TABLE III Landscape characteristics with potential for monitoring Balser et al., 1981 Landscape structure Biophysical Inventory Number and configuration Island biogeography equilibrial species number and relaxation rates species richness: area geometric design linkages: barriers and corridors R and K strategies Landscape dynamics Additional Considerations contaminant distribution rare and endangered species endemicity and peripherality patch dynamics stability to endogenous change resilience to exogenous change catastrophe theory spillover effects population genetics home range and territory size edge dynamics ecological valence hierarchical system patterns allergy, epidemiology, pests

Forman and Godron, 1986

Turner, 1989

Patches: types, size, shape,

Relative (habitat) richness

Corridors: Line, strip, stream Matrix, porosity, boundary Networks Micro- and macroheterogeneity Configuration of patches, corridors and matrix Landscape contrast and grain size

Relative (habitat) evenness Relative patchiness Diversity (habitat)

Dominance Geomorphology Establishment of life forms Soil development Natural disturbance Modification of natural rhythms Landscape modification tools and methods Landscape modification gradient Landscape element linkages Locomotion, air and soil flows Land - stream interactions Plant and animal movement Corridors, matrix, networks and flows Stability, metastability Shifting mosaics and transition matrixes Forces and stabilizing properties

Fractal dimension Nearest neighbour probabilities Contagion Edges

and fish abundance and condition (Karr, 1981; Karr and Dudley, 1981). The IBI has been found useful and consistent (Karr et al., 1987) in a variety of regions and applications, although it must be modified for different areas (Miller et al., 1988; Hughes, 1989). Recently the IBI has been expected to include other aquatic taxa than fish (Karr, 1990), and for terrestrial habitats (Karr, 1987). The advantages of the IBI are that it is a broadly based ecological index, is sensitive to different sources of degradation, and produces biologically meaningful and reproducible results. Its disadvantages are the requirement for at least moderate species richness and extensive background information, and that setting of some criteria is subjective (Fausch et al., 1990). More generally Angermeier et al. (1986) have suggested several guidelines for managing nongame species for ecological integrity. Their criteria have some similarities with other approaches discussed in this review: adopt a landscape perspective, avoid practices that involve system-level perturbation, be familiar with the biota, and adopt an integrative approach.

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In Annex II of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, ecosystem integrity is defined in relation to its opposite, ecosystem disintegrity: 'the impairment of beneficial use(s) or of the area's ability to support aquatic life' in 'areas of concern' (International Joint Commission, 1989: 31). A number of examples of disintegrity are given. These include loss of fish and wildlife habitat, restrictions on drinking water consumption, or restrictions on dredging and beach use. Other efforts in the basin have provided qualitative views of what ecosystem integrity might be (Francis et al., 1979; 1985). At best TABLE IV Qualitative characteristics of integrity and disintegrity Characteristics of disintegrity in the Great Lakes An Image of a Restored Great Lakes Ecosystem (International Joint Commission, 1989) (Francis et al., 1979) Restrictions on fish and wildlife consumption Tainting of fish and wildlife favour Degradation of fish and wildlife populations Fish tumors or other deformities Bird or animal deformities or reproduction problems Degradation of benthos Restrictions on dredging activity Restrictions on drinking water consumption Beach closings Degradation of aesthetics Added costs to agriculture or industry Degradation of plankton communities Loss of fish and wildlife habitat Criteria of integrity from restoration ecology (Ewel, in Jordan et al., 1987) The ecosystem is capable of perpetuating itself The ecosystem resists invasion by new species Ecosystem productivity is not impaired Nutrient retention is not impaired The biotic assemblage and interactions are not impaired

Drink water without fear of ingesting harmful viruses, bacteria, protozoa and poisons. Eat fish and waterfowl knowing they are relatively uncontaminated by dangerous chemicals. Swim without becoming infected by disease or soiled by waste films on the water surface. Enjoy the beauty of pebble beaches that are uncontaminated by abnormal algal growths. Relax in the sand without becoming soiled by industrial and domestic wastes Delight in clear waters in seasons when the waters normally should be clear Canoe or sail without encountering surface scums of wastes and offensive 'floatables' Study with pleasure a healthy ecological mosaic in the coastal zone Watch birds, plants, mammals and fish in their natural settings, behaving naturally Angle with the firm expectation of encountering large numbers of preferred species of fish Hunt waterfowl and wildlife produced or accomodated in the coastal zone Harvest commercially valuable species of fish and furbearers in profitable quantities Maintain dwellings near shore with confidence that nearby natural amenities will not diminish in value Administer profitable parks, playgrounds, marinas and resorts that will enjoy high popularity indefinitely Feel secure in the knowledge that not everything natural is expendable for some group's immediate interests Take pride in the mere existence of undegraded ecosystems not far from our teeming cities

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these efforts provide subjective, qualitative assessments of ecosystem integrity. Table IV provides a comparison of qualitative descriptors of ecosystem integrity and disintegrity. An area of great potential, that has arisen from ecosystem theory and systems theory, is that of the study of self-organising systems in ecology (cf. Steedman and Regier, 1987: 96). One approach is to view ecosystems as networks whose complexity tends to increase naturally due to autocatalytic (positive feedback) processes (Ulanowicz, 1986; 1988). Ecosystem integrity can be seen as emerging from ecosystem development based on a 'rich set of behaviours'. These behaviours result from development that is nonlinear, discontinuous, unpredictable, and multi-valued (Kay, 1989). Still more generally there are approaches which argue for studying behaviour and emergent characteristics of complex, integrated sociobiophysical systems in order to focus on types of change in them (Grzybowski and Slocombe, 1988; Slocombe, 1989; 1990). These approaches are all still new. They serve best, at present, to focus attention on system behaviour and emergent characteristics; complementing descriptive lists of structural characteristics. This direction is best reflected in practice by work in the Great Lakes Basin on ecosystem rehabilitation: work that seeks to eliminate disintegrity. Such work has a number of common characteristics of wide applicability: (1) an emphasis on ecological structure and processes, (2) recognition of system self-regulatory and bounding capabilities together with responsiveness to natural and human activities (stresses), and (3) a methodological balance between analytic, reductionist, structural description and holistic, comprehensive, process understanding (Lee et al., 1982). If there is, as yet, no certain definition of ecosystem integrity it is likely that the field of restoration ecology may have the potential to contribute much to development of one. This is so because of the demands restoring or rehabilitating an ecosystem put on ecological theory and practice. Ewel (in Jordan et al., 1987) proposes a list of five criteria fur judging the success of ecosystem restoration. They could serve well anyone interested in assessing or managing for ecosystem integrity. Slightly modified, the criteria are (1) Is the ecosystem capable of perpetuating itself?., (2) Does the ecosystem resist invasions by new species? (3) Is net ecosystem productivity unimpaired? (4) Is ecosystem retention of nutrients unimpaired? and (5) Is the biota, and its interactions, unimpaired? Many of the detailed data and system characteristics identified in the previous sections could contribute to detailed assessment of these five questions. Assessing the State of Park Environments Clearly there are many possible inputs to efforts to assess the integrity or overall state of protected areas. Use of the concepts and information resulting from their application will require bringing them together in a usuable form. State of the environment reporting may be one framework for this. Equally important is awareness of past experience with monitoring in protected areas. Each of these are now reviewed before some final conclusions are presented.

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State of the Environment Reporting State of the environment reporting, especially when institutionalized, is a means of providing the public, the private sector, NGO's, and government departments with information by which to judge problems and trends in environmental quality. The information is most often used to assess appropriate and/or necessary actions in relation to environmental quality. State of the environment reporting involves collection, compilation, and publication of quantitative data about a variety of aspects of the environment at scales ranging from regional through national and continental to global. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports (OECD, 1979, 1985) and accompanying statistical compendia were among the first, and cover environmental conditions and trends in the principal environmental sectors, pressures on the environment from activities such as energy and agriculture and problems such as solid waste and radioactivity, and general background data on populations and economies. The Canadian SoE reports follow a similar format with a volume on human activities and the environment (Statistics Canada, 1985) and another on the state of the environment (Bird and Rapport, 1986). Perhaps most closely comparable to state of the parks reporting, some SoE reports have been produced at a regional level (Elkin, 1987). Recent trends include using SoE reports for assessing government activity, assessing cause-effect relationships in environmental change, and developing a spatial framework for environmental reporting (Elkin, 1990). In Canada, the stress/response approach has strongly influenced SoE reporting in hopes of elucidating cause-effect relationships. Most recently this framework has been used to develop criteria for selecting state of the environment indicators (for agents of environmental change and environmental conditions). SoE indicators should be feasible to obtain, scientifically credible, understandable, provide early warning, and enable the detection of spatial and temporal trends (Indicators Task Force, 1991). It should be recognized that a State of the Environment report is a framework for data collection, that facilitates interpretation and evaluation of human activities from an environmental perspective (see Table V). What is new and innovative about SoE reporting is not theory, but the combination of data they include and the use to which it is expected an SoE report will be put. The only differences between a good resource description and analysis and the contents of Elkin's regional SoE relate to the different locations of the exercises. Creating state of the parks reports that facilitate assessment of integrity, and change, will depend on new and better utilization of knowledge and theories from areas such as ecosystem science, stress/response approaches, landscape ecology, and studies of system integrity and rehabilitation. Collecting data, even monitoring, is not new; what is collected, what is monitored, could be.

The Experience of Protected Areas Monitoring An earlier section focused on the theory and design of environmental monitoring for protected areas and elsewhere. Here we survey the literature on actual monitoring

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TABLE V Contents of a regional state of the environment report Contents of Elkin's (1987) SoE Report for Waterloo Region, Ontario Abiotic

Biotic

Cultural

Air quality Agriculture Population Religion, language, education Trends in traditional Farming population Family and household characterpollutants Ownership istics, housing National Ambient air quality Land Area Health standards Crops, livestock, and poultry Social problems Acid Rain The state of soils Ozone Environmental effects of Institutions Trace pollutants agriculture Urban agriculture Government response and legislation Water Local government, citizen's and Water supply Forests Forest resources interest groups State of the aquatic ecoPrivate sector system State of the forest resource Influences on the region's forests Education Pollutants and drinking Research, monitoring, public Physical change water supply information Water management Government expenditures Wildlife Waste Condition of wildlife Economy Waste generation Wetlands The local economy, growth and Impact of human activities Disposal of municipal waste change Recycling of municipal waste Protection and management Regional comparative advantage Industrial and hazardous Manufacturing trends OVERVIEW disposal Economic differentiation between cities Current problems Energy Air quality Consumption Recreation Water Conservation Need, opportunities, and supply Wastes and pollution Energy use and the Cultural heritage Noise environment Tourism Land Forest Aggregates Land use Wildlife Change and capability Noise Land use and environmental Environmental management quality Land use and natural hazards Environmental information Land use and recharge areas Infrastructure Municipal wastewater treatment Industrial wastewater treatment Transportation Transportation trends and the environment

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experience in protected areas. There has been pollution monitoring in U.S. biosphere reserves and national parks since 1976 (Wiersma, 1985; Brown, 1979). The greatest effort has been expended on monitoring air quality in U.S. national parks, partly for visibility and other scenic attributes (e.g. Rowe and Chestnut, 1983; Maim and Molenar, 1981), but also for environmental quality (Kahaner, 1988 provides a popular overview). Atmospheric contaminants have been cited as the principal source of external threats to national park ecosystems (Stottlemyer, 1987), and not just in heavily developed regions such as the Great Lakes Basin (cp. A rmentano and Loucks, 1983; Brown, 1981; Davidson et al., 1984; Derick, et al., 1984). Overall the U.S. NPS air quality research and monitoring program has focused on monitoring visibility, the effects of visibility on visitor experiences, ambient air quality, and biological effects. The biological effects component has included a wide range of field and laboratory studies such as fumigation, visible injury surveys, elemental surveys, histological studies, biomonitoring gardens, permanent plots, and physiological and ecological studies (O'Leary, 1988). Although most of the American (and other) literature deals with the types of contaminants and the magnitude of contamination, some papers deal with techniques: e.g. elemental analysis of lichens (Rhoades, 1988), the use of thematic mapper data (Ward et al., 1989), and the use of kinetic models (Wiersma et al., 1984b). Even more deal with specific problems, e.g. forest decline (Saxena et al., 1989; Skelly et al., 1982), stream acidification (Shaffer and Galloway, 1982) visitor and development impacts (Stankey et al., 1985; Harvey et al., 1986), vegetation change (Belsky, 1985; Hemstrom and Franklin, 1981) or wildlife population trends (Eberhardt et al., 1986). A second, broader and more integrated, area of monitoring interest and activity is in biosphere reserves. Baseline inventory, long-term environmental monitoring, and longterm biological research are activities of recognized, if varied practical, importance in biosphere reserves around the world (cf. Mack et al., 1983; Izrael et al., 1984b). Indeed, the role of biosphere reserves in global monitoring, the need for a baseline data bank on them, and the need for standardization of monitoring activities in them, have all been clearly argued (Croze, 1984b; Harrison, 1984). Methodologically, there is a range of papers to choose from. In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park biosphere reserve much work on baseline data management and environmental monitoring has been done. The goal of such work is making monitoring a part of more general management processes, making it useful (cf. Berczik, 1984; Wiersma, 1985). In part this means a focus on purposeful monitoring: utilizing a process with prediction, monitoring, and assessment steps (Johnson and Bratton, 1978; Peine et al., 1985). And in part it means a focus on monitoring for known threats, especially external ones such as pollution. Examples from the U.S. and elsewhere include integrated monitoring of background pollution using bioindicators (Steubing, 1984), trace element and hydrologic studies (Wiersma et al., 1984a, Wiersma, 1985), and combined geophysical/biological monitoring (Izrael et al., 1984a). And more specifically, the literature includes recommendations for including bioecological, geosystemic, and biospheric components in a monitoring program (Gerasimov, 1984) and for monitoring based on soil invertebrates (Ghilyarov and Pokzrzhevsky, 1984).

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Yet published studies that attempt to provide guidance for an integrated monitoring system that would directly include concepts of ecosystem science, stress/response approaches, landscape ecology, and ecosystem integrity in order to facilitate development of an assessment of the state of a protected area, appear to be few indeed. The next section offers some prospective pointers and concluding observations. Conclusion

There can be little argument that ecological and environmental monitoring in national parks is an important activity both for the park itself and for wider activities of environmental protection and science. It is necessary to collect data on, and monitor the effects of, both known and unknown sources of change. Monitoring of permanent attributes, semi-permanent attributes, and ephemeral or seasonal attributes forms the base of any protected area monitoring programme (Croze, 1984a). The first hurdle facing the Canadian and other parks services in this area is to recognize that some park characteristics should be monitored simply because they are dynamic (cf. Parks Canada, 1989: s.9.2e). A resource description and analysis, an inventory, a picture of the state of a park at one point in time, or monitoring for compliance are only initial steps. The second step is tracking change. A second key point is the need to monitor at several scales; for example the speciespopulation level, the ecosystem-community level, and the regional-global system level (cf. White and Bratton, 1980). A third key point is development of an integrated program, one that, as well as identification of species and processes to be monitored, identifies goals, methods, and procedures to ensure standardization and widespread implementation of the program (Davis, 1989 is a good example). Finally, it should be recognised that without incorporation of ideas from ecosystem science, stress/response approaches, landscape ecology, and ecological integrity research, a state of the parks report or database probably will not be significantly different from a resource survey. And unless a database or geographical information system (GIS) is part of an integrated monitoring and information management process much of the database's potential usefulness in managing change will be lost (cf. Gauthier et al., 1989). Ecosystem science and the other theories have two major contributions to make. The first is identification of system structures and processes that most contribute to integrity or continued functioning of the system. The second contribution is to development of new summary and integrative indicators: indicators that will be particularly sensitive to change and its impacts on integrity. One would do well to remember that, ultimately, integrity is a criterion by which we seek to judge the state of a national park (cf. Smith and Theberge, 1986 on criteria for evaluating the significance of natural areas). Integrity is no more a characteristic of a park in the simple, direct way that species diversity or lake pH are, than is representativeness. Rather it is an emergent property of the park system. It is a property that integrates (includes, summarizes) many other characteristics - as does James Karr's Index of Biotic Integrity. By itself, a measure of integrity will probably not tell one more than whether park m a n a g e m e n t is succeeding or failing in the goals of

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preserving integrity. Knowledge of how ecosystem and human structures and processes need to be managed, the details of what's wrong or right, will have to come from the varied data and theories that inform the definition and assessment of integrity - and design of a complete monitoring programme. References Agee, J.K. and Johnson, D.R.: 1988, Ecosystem Management for Parks and Wilderness, University of Washington Press, Seattle. Allen, T. F. H. and Starr, T.: 1982, Hierarchy: Perspectives for Ecological Complexity, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Angermeier, P.L., Neves, R.J. and Karr, J.R.: 1986. 'Nongame Perspectives on Aquatic Resource Management', in J. B. Hale, Best, L. B., and Clawson, R. L. (eds.), Management of Nongame Wildlife in the Midwest: A Developing Art. North Central Section, The Wildlife Society, pp. 43-57. Armentano, T. V. and Loucks, O. L.: 1983, 'Air Pollution Threats to US National Parks of the Great Lakes Region', Environ. Conserv. 10, 303-313. Ausmus, B. S.: 1984, 'An Argument for Ecosystem Level Monitoring', Environ. Mon. andAssess. 4, 275-293. Ballentine, R.K. and Guarraia, L.J. (eds.): 1975, The Integrity of Water. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. Balser, D., Bielak, A., De Boer, G., Tobias, T., Adindu, G. and Dorney, R.S.: 1981, 'Nature Reserve Designation in a Cultural Landscape Incorporating Island Biogeography Theory', Landscape Planning 8, 329-347. Barrett, G.W.: 1978, 'Stress Effects on Natural Ecosystems', Ohio J. of Science 78, 160-162. Barrett, G. W., Van Dyne, G. M., and Odum, E. P.: 1976, 'Stress Ecology', BioScience 26, 192-194. Bastedo, J. D., Nelson, J. G., and Theberge, J. B.: 1984, 'An Ecological Approach to Resource Survey and Planning for Environmentally Significant Areas: The ABC Method', Environ. Management 8, 125-134. Battin, J. G. and Nelson, J. G.: 1978, Man's Impact on Point Pelee NationaIPark, National and Provincial Parks Association, Toronto. Beanlands, G. E. and Duinker, P. N.: 1983, An Ecological Framework for Environmental Impact Assessment in Canada, Inst. for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dalhousie Univ., Halifax and FEARO, Ottawa. Belsky, A. J.: 1985, 'Long-Term Vegetation Monitoring in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania', J. Applied Ecol. 22, 449-460. Berczik, A.: 1984, 'Adaptability of Monitoring Systems in the Management of Biosphere Reserves Experiences in Hungary', in Conservation, Science and Society, UNESCO-UNEP, Paris, pp. 384-388. Bird, P. M. and Rapport, D.J.: May 1986, State of the Environment Report for Canada, Supply and Services Canada, Ottawa. Boecklen, W. J.: 1986, 'Optimal Design of Nature Reserves: Consequences of Genetic Drift', Biol. Conserv. 38, 323-338. Bratton, S.B.: 1985, 'National Park Management and Values', Environ. Ethics 7(2), 117-124. Breymeyer, A. J.: 1981, 'Monitoring of the Functioning of Ecosystems', Environ. Mon. andAssess. 1,175-183. Brown, B. B.: Nov. 1979, 'The National Park Service Air Quality and Acid Rain Program', in Action Seminar on Acid Precipitation, Toronto, November 1-3, pp. 257-259. Brown, K.W.: 1981, 'Pollutant Monitoring in the Olympic National Park Biosphere Reserve', Environ. Monitoring and Assess. 1, 37-47. Brown, L. R. and Flavin, C.: 1988, 'The Earth's Vital Signs', in L. R. Brown et al., The State of the World 1988, Norton, New York, pp. 3-21. Cairns, J., Jr.: 1975, 'Critical Species, Including Man, within the Biosphere', Naturwissenschaften 62, 193-199. Cairns, J., Jr.: 1986, 'The Myth of the Most Sensitive Species', BioScience 36, 670-672. Cairns, J., Jr.: and Dickson, K. L.: 1980, 'The ABCs of Biological Monitoring', in C.R. Hocutt and J. R. Stauffer, Jr. (eds.), Biological Monitoring ofFish. Lexington Books, Lexington, KY, pp. 1-31. Caldwell, L. K.: 1970, 'The Ecosystem as a Criterion for Public Land Policy', NaturalResources J. 10,203-221. Chase, A.: 1987, Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovitch, New York.

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