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The Forum on Ecoregional Monitoring for the National Wildlife Refuge System and Other Public Lands across Alaska is hosted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. Originally motivated by and focused on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's development of an ecoregionally cohesive and/or statewide monitoring program, the Forum is an opportunity to improve coordination and compatibility across monitoring programs. Such an approach increases the potential for assessment, trend detection, and synthesis at broader scales, in arctic and subarctic ecosystems.
High northern latitudes already are, and will continue experiencing some of the greatest changes in climate parameters; these changes likely will have profound implications for both landscape integrity and future conservation and management actions. Thus, climate change not only highlights the importance of thinking broadly (e.g., due to migration of species' distributions, and shifting mosaics of wetlands, permafrost and other waters), but also is a lens that may focus discussions about future monitoring strategies.
The Forum's objectives are to:
- discuss lessons learned from other national and international regional-scale inventory and monitoring programs, including:
- underlying conceptual models and monitoring designs;
- implementation issues, such as program objectives, selection of indicators, funding strategies, and ongoing challenges;
- use this understanding to develop a regional monitoring program for Alaska’s Refuges that is sensitive to climate-induced changes and considers the refuge-specific monitoring programs in their ecoregional and regional contexts.
Redoubt Volcano Advisory information (also see links on left-hand side of volcano advisory page).
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