Priority Data on Marine and Estuarine Resources Within Northeastern National Parks: Inventory and Acquisition Needs

Publisher Marketing: Enhanced conservation and management of submerged marine and estuarine resources is moving to the forefront of National Park Service (NPS) planning at the national and regional levels. The NPS Ocean Park Stewardship Task Force and Action Plan (2007a) commits to science-based conservation of marine resources and calls for increased understanding of marine ecosystems and human interactions, restoration of impacted resources, and new measures to enhance park resource management efforts. To implement this plan in the Northeast Region (NER), a regional Ocean Stewardship Task Force developed the Northeast Region Ocean Park Strategic Plan (NPS 2007b). For some coastal parks in the NER, a very significant portion of the total park area is defined as submerged (FIIS 75%, GATE 67%, ASIS 66%, CACO 38%; see Table 1 for park abbreviations), yet there is a lack of basic information on natural resources within these submerged lands. Therefore, the NER Ocean Park Strategic Plan established a goal to inventory and map natural and cultural resources within the submerged boundaries of the region's coastal parks. Basic information about the components, characteristics, and processes affecting submerged resources is fundamental to the NPS mandate of conserving and managing the resources under its stewardship. Maps and inventories for submerged resources are critical for coastal park managers to develop policies for resource protection, to identify restoration and research needs, to provide for recreation use, to assess habitat condition and measure performance, and to design monitoring programs.