Salt Marsh Vegetation and Nekton Community Monitoring at William Floyd Estate, Fire Island National Seashore: 2009 Summary Report

The Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network (NCBN) is one of 32 networks of parks created by the Inventory and Monitoring Program (I&M Program) of the National Park Service. The I&M Program has two components, 1) to collect baseline ecological inventory datasets and 2) to implement Vital Signs monitoring, a long-term ecological monitoring program, in each of the Network parks. The Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network consists of eight parks linked by geography and shared ecological characteristics along the Northeastern Atlantic Coast. As part of the Vital Signs program, each Network has developed detailed protocols for monitoring a select number of Vital Signs, or ecological indicators. Because the majority of parks in the NCBN are coastal parks, salt marsh monitoring was chosen as a high priority and a protocol was developed for collecting long-term data on salt marsh vegetation and nekton (James-Pirri In Developmenta, b).