Excerpt from Biochemistry of a Mature Boreal Ecosystem: Isle Royale National Park, Michigan
The importance of watershed ecosystem research to the management of natural areas such as national parks cannot be overstated. Watershed conditions are affected by uncertain and complex interactive environmental trends, many of global occurrence. Questions about watershed science, although often site specific, thus require answers in a global context. Frequently, input to the highest levels of government decision making is needed if modern society is to mitigate, stop, or reverse the large scale alterations of watershed ecosystems world wide. However, our ability to sensibly and effectively manage natural resources in today’s global environment is often constrained by our lack of knowledge about the hydrologic cycle and its relation with the geosphere and biosphere. We know that the current condition of natural resources in parks and other preserved lands is subject to many widespread anthropogenic changes from acidification, eutrophication, toxic substances, boundary encroachments, over use. Species shifts or extirpation, desertification, loss of biodiversity, land use change, and sea level rise. Long-term watershed research and monitoring of natural and remote areas in the National Park System and in similar reserves provide important data on ecosystem processes and interactions for detecting spatial and temporal changes in environmental conditions. These data collections allow the partitioning of cause-and-effect relations of ecological change in watersheds. They also serve to meet reference and early warning objectives correlative with natural ecosystem change. Accordingly, the scientific and public policy communities can employ watershed ecosystem information as one means of obtaining early indications of the potential effects of anthropogenic stress and an improved assessment of its magnitude. Use of the concept to address several goals of research into acid precipitation or biogeochemical cycling demonstrated the utility of these integrated watershed data for inter - ecosystem comparison between preserved and other watersheds. The long-term management strategies of the National Park Service combined with the protected nature of park lands placed the service in a unique position among federal agencies and among international conservation organizations to document relations between ecosystem effects and anthropogenic influences.
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