April 7th--Natural Heritage Monitoring Workshop

7 Trail volunteers met at ATC's Kellogg Conservation Center and after a morning of instruction by botanist Ted Elliman, headed out into the woods to train as Natural Heritage Monitors for the Appalachian Trail. 

Ted led the volunteers through some basic plant identification techniques and how to use the National Park Service reporting forms.  In the field, volunteers visited a number of rare plant communities and learned the best way to measure the occurrence of each plant--whether by counting individual stems, measuring the area covered by a group of plants, or gridding  the area and taking several population samples.

Typically, a Natural Heritage Monitor covers one or more locations in NPS Appalachian Trail lands, usually once a year.  Reports are submitted to the Park Service where the data are compiled and analyzed.

National Parks (of which the AT is one) are required to inventory and report on the status of all RTE (Rare, Threatened and Endangered) species within the park.  In keeping with the strong volunteer tradition of the Appalachian Trail, NPS welcomes citizen participation in this effort by AT volunteers.  To provide usable data, and keep the location of the populations confidential, Natural Heritage volunteers must participate in the type of training workshop that was held last week.  If you are interested in finding out more about being a Natural Heritage Monitor, contact us at at@amcberkshire.org

Sorry, no photos of this workshop are available.

Thanks for tuning in,

Cosmo