Decadal time scale vegetation monitoring and change detection in Franklin Mountains State Park, West Texas

• Investigators: Craig E. Tweedie
• Funding Agency: Texas Parks and Wildlife Service
• Project Length: June 2007 – August 2009
• SEL Participants: Paul Hotchkin
• Web sites with more information on this project:

Summary:

Decade-time scale vegetation monitoring and change detection is essential for understanding the natural dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems (Reynolds et al., 2006), how they are responding to global change (including climate change and anthropogenic disturbance [Peters and Gibbens, 2006]), and for optimizing environmental policy and management to sustain biodiversity, ecosystem function and other ecosystem goods and services (Bestelmeyer et al., 2006). This is especially important in the Franklin Mountains because this mountain ecosystem is the largest urban state park in the United States, and it is situated immediately next to the largest international border municipality in the world ( http://www.sierraclub.org/environmental_justice/projects_mexico.asp).The Franklin Mountains State Park is thus subjected to various human-associated pressures such as land use change, desertification, invasive species, pollution, urban heat island effects, and poaching. The key objective of the proposed research activities outlined in detail below is to re-survey 50 vegetation monitoring plots established in Franklin Mountains State Park during 1998/2001 and to determine how and why the plant species composition and vegetation structure has/has not changed at these sites over the past decade. Three auxiliary studies are proposed to take place concurrently with the re-survey effort. These studies will complement the re-survey by investigating the Franklin mountains vegetation at multiple temporal and spatial scales, and will contribute to data archives maintained by Texas Parks and Wildlife (TPW). This project will form a key component of Paul Hotchkin’s PhD dissertation.