Print Friendly

Vital Signs Prioritization

Vital signs were prioritized for each park unit by staff at each park unit relative to the perceived importance of including each vital sign category as part of an aquatic resources monitoring program. The prioritization of vital signs varied among the units (Table 24):

1. Crater Lake identified each of the five general vital signs as important for monitoring the park’s lentic and lotic resources;

2. Lassen did not identify any of the land and non-recreational human use impact subcategories as potentially affecting the park’s water resources;

3. Climate change was identified as the top priority vital sign at Lava Beds, followed by four types of land and non-recreational human use impacts (i.e., park unit operations, timber harvest/operations, agriculture, and geothermal exploration);

4. Land and non-recreational human use impacts (esp., associated with human waste disposal and timber harvest), climate change, and visitor use impacts – recreational (i.e., general impacts) were identified as priority vital signs for Oregon Caves;

5. Redwoods did not identify atmospheric deposition of nutrients and pollutants as a priority vital sign for the park’s freshwater and marine resources;

6. The only vital sign identified as important for Whiskeytown aquatic resources was land and non-recreational human use impacts and included three priority subcategories (i.e., past mining operations, dam operation and water-level flux, and impacts due to fire and fire suppression).

Table 24: Priority Ratings for Each of Five General Aquatic Resource Vital Sign Categories and Subcategories. Ratings for each Klamath Network Park Unit are From 1-4 with 1 Being the Highest Priority. The Two CRLA Ratings are Lentic/Lotic; The Two RNSP Ratings are Freshwater/Marine; The Two WHIS Ratings are DAM Operations/Water-Level Flux.

An index was created to determine the perceived importance of each general vital sign category at the network-level. The index was calculated for each vital sign by adding the priority rating (i.e., 1–4, with 1 being the highest priority) assigned to the vital sign by each park unit (Table 24). If a park unit did not assign a rating to a vital sign then a rating of 5 was assigned to that vital sign for that unit. If a park unit assigned two or more ratings to a vital sign (e.g., CRLA atmospheric deposition = 3/2; LABE land and non-recreational human use impacts = 4/2a/3/2b; Table 24) then the ratings for that vital sign were averaged. The average index for all park units for each general vital sign was calculated as:

1. [CRLA + LAVO + LABE + ORCA + RNSP + WHIS]/6 park units.

For example:

1. atmospheric deposition = [(3+2/2)+2+5+5+5+5]/6 = 4.1,

2. land use = [3+5+(4+2+3+2/4)+(1+2/2)+(1+4+1+2+2/5)+(1+2+2+3/4)]/6 = 2.7. Two basic groups of vital signs were identified based on the calculation of the average index for each of the five general vital signs: (1) climate change and land and nonrecreational human use impacts scored 2.7; and (2) presence and extent of native/introduced (invasive) aquatic biota, visitor use impacts – recreational, and atmospheric deposition scored between 3.8 and 4.1.