Lichen Community Analysis for Environmental Monitoring
Project ID: P14AC01637
Federal Agency: National Park Service
Partner Institution: Oregon State University
Fiscal Year: 2014
Initial Funding: $14,007
Total Funding: $14,007
Project Type: Research
Project Disciplines: Biological
National Park: Alaska Region I-M multi networks
Principal Investigator: McCune, Bruce
Agreement Technical Representative: Bower, Michael
Abstract: Lichen communities have been shown to be sensitive to changes in environmental pollution and climate change, making them good candidates for long-term monitoring of ecosystem conditions. Building upon prior efforts, a partnership among the National Park Service (NPS), the US Forest Service, and Oregon State University (OSU) has been formed to integrate existing lichen data across southwest, south-central, and southeast Alaska, and collaboratively develop and refine tools for monitoring climate change and air quality change. This project
continues that partnership between NPS and OSU to conduct analyses and modeling of lichen communities for environmental monitoring purposes. Project objectives include developing lichen-climate gradient models to assess climate-driven changes over the last two decades for south-central and southeast Alaska, potentially expanding the scope of these models to incorporate larger geographic areas including southwest Alaska NPS parks, and exploring the feasibility of incorporating indicators of air pollution to produce lichen-climate-air quality gradient models.
Deliverables: