Status and Trends

Program Relevance

The Nation’s living resources and the habitats on which they depend are undergoing constant change. Climate change, invasive species, and a plethora of human activities are causing natural resource management and conservation efforts to become increasingly challenging and complex. To help meet this challenge, USGS’s Status and Trends of Biological Resources Program supports and provides the collection and analysis of biological data for use by natural resource managers, scientists, and the general public.

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To protect and conserve the living resources entrusted to their care, land and resource managers must first understand the condition, or status, of those resources:
• inventory (what they are),
• distribution (where they are located),
• abundance (how many there are),
• productivity (their capacity to produce),
• health (their well-being, resilience)
and then understand the trends being exhibited by those resources
• variables change over time and space.

Visit our Program Overview Learn more about the USGS Status & Trends Program; including our goals. page to learn more.

News & Events

2/9/2009 - 2/12/2009 - 2009 Weed Science Society of America and Southern Weed Science Society Joint Meeting

10/12/2008 - 10/15/2008 - 62nd Annual SEAFWA Conference

5/11/2009 - 5/15/2009 - World Ocean Conference 2009

9/27/2008 - Opening of Smithsonian's Ocean Hall

Did You Know...?

Bat Research in California
Bats reduce the need for chemical pesticides. Bats normally eat about half their weight in flying insects each night. Most species of North American bats feed on flying insects, including mosquitoes. A single little brown bat can eat as many as 600 small insects in an hour. Some of the largest colonies of Mexican free-tailed bats consume more than 100 tons of insects during spring and summer nights.

Feature

Louisiana Coastal Land Loss was approximately 1,900 square miles, primarily coastal marshes, during the 20th century. Louisiana could lose another 700 square miles over the next 50 years if no new restoration takes place. By 2050, one third of coastal Louisiana will have vanished into the Gulf of Mexico.

Learn more.

Projects

We monitor our nation's living resources to understand changes in animal and plant habitats. Visit our Methods and Techniques page for more information.

Learn more about our science-based monitoring through the Status and Trends of Biological Resources Program. Read About Us....

Biological Inventory and Monitoring

Biological Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) is an essential tool to understand the status and trends of plant and animal populations, as well as, to help us to see large-scale patterns of ecosystem health, so vital to the survival of humans and all species.

Biological inventory is the obtaining and compiling of data regarding plant and animal species to gain knowledge of what species exist, where they are located, how many there are, and the state of their health.

For effective management of plant and animal populations to occur, these factors need to be monitored both in the "here and now" and over the long-term in order to detect trends in the status of these populations. As species population trends are identified, management protocols can be adjusted.

Visit our Biological Inventory and Monitoring page to learn more.

Publications

River One of the goals of Status and Trends of Biological Resources is to provide Web-accessible reports and publications to advance greater understanding, interpretation, and use of status and trends information.

Featured on our publications page are pdfs of our strategic plan and program brochure as well as links to many other Status and Trends publications and reports.

Visit our Reports and Publications page for other featured Status and trends publications.