7. MONITORING PLAN

Long-term management will entail tracking the status of biodiversity in these Natural Areas to assess their overall environmental quality and ecological integrity.  The following monitoring program is designed to use SFRPD resources and community-based support to track two phenomena: (1) the status of critical biodiversity elements in the Natural Areas; and, (2) the impacts of stewardship activities on these elements.

Biodiversity elements include recognized special-status plant and wildlife species (e.g., listed species and species of special concern), indicator species tied to stewardship goals, indigenous native plant assemblages, and remnant wetlands.  The monitoring program consists of a framework for tracking the effects of stewardship activities on these elements.

Long-term preservation will only be achieved if conservation management of these Natural Areas:

•                     accounts for the physical context and historic processes that originally shaped the local
environment of the Natural Areas;

•                     identifies the human-generated pressures that are impacting the Natural Areas and
conducts management activities that off-set these pressures;

•                     tracks the status of natural populations and evaluates the impacts of conservation
activities; and

•                     adjusts and adapts management activities based upon on-going experience in meeting
conservation goals.

The biodiversity within the Natural Areas is much greater than might be assumed. Native plant communities will serve as the focus of the monitoring program. Areas where restoration and enhancement activities take place will be evaluated in the comparison with other sites which support the desired plant and wildlife assemblages (reference sites). Targets and success criteria for project areas will be based in part on reference sites.

The monitoring program will focus on five goals and the actions required to support those goals. The five goals of the monitoring program are as follows:

1. Use a GIS system and field sampling to track the change in status of natural plant communities over time due to stewardship activities and/or natural causes and to identify Critical Areas' on the basis of specified criteria.

2. Track the dynamics of special-status species populations in Critical Areas through time.

3. Assess the impacts of stressors, such as human recreation and invasive non-native species, on Critical Areas within the system.

4. Determine biodiversity indicators to evaluate the general status of biodiversity within and between the Critical Areas of each Significant Natural Area as well as within and between adjacent landscape and regional programs (through comparison with other programs).

5. Build an inventory of species observations in each Natural Area over time.

Critical Areas are defined slightly differently in the monitoring program.  They are to be established based on biodiversity elements including recognized special-status plant and wildlife species (e.g., listed species and species of special concern), indicator species tied to stewardship goals, indigenous native plant assemblages, and remnant wetlands