What is NRMP? Monitoring is essential to making effective management decisions and evaluating the outcomes of those decisions. Unfortunately, limited resources, incomplete information, and international or jurisdictional boundaries can compromise the ability of resource managers to design and implement effective monitoring programs. Too often, monitoring is the last thing to get done and the first thing to be cut. Most monitoring and evaluation is driven by specific projects and short term information needs, limiting our ability to take advantage of economies of scale and make the most of scarce resources. The Natural Resource Monitoring Partnership was built with YOU in mind: Get easy access to monitoring protocols throughout the U.S. and Canada. Find out what monitoring is happening in your region or for a particular species or habitat. Enhance State planning efforts and identify opportunities for collaboration
is a collaborative effort by the natural resource management community to improve monitoring efforts in order to support effective evaluation and decision- making. Current participants include State, Federal, and Canadian natural resource management agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and academic institutions. The Partnership is led by several collaborative teams made up of volunteers from participating agencies and organizations. However, the Partnership has no formal authority and does not exert any control over the work of any individual or institution: it exists only to help improve the design and implementation of monitoring programs by improving communication and coordination among individuals and institutions engaged in natural resource monitoring. For more information, see our Factsheet and PowerPoint presentation. |
Newsletter• NRMP has grown. We now have 282 projects in our monitoring locator and 87 protocols in our monitoring protocol library from 12 US and Canadian federal agencies, 26 States, 14 universities, and 12 NGOs. more grown • Message from the Leadership Team. Welcome to the inaugural issue of the NRMP Newsletter! A little more than one year ago the NRMP web site became operational, able to host information provided by federal, state, academic, NGO, and other organizations regarding their natural resource monitoring projects and protocols. more message • Try NRMP. Go to the NRMP site and search for monitoring projects or protocols that may be of interest to you. If you have looked before, please look again, as we have added a lot of projects and protocols. A tutorial on searching is available. • NRMP User Comments. See what some of our users say about NRMP
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Monitoring Locator and Protocol Library Have Grown.
Go to NRMP to explore the new entries. A full summary of contributor projects and protocols is available below. Want to contribute a monitoring project or protocol to NRMP? Go to the NRMP webpage and 
ChallengeSome organizations have made exemplary efforts to enter projects and protocols. One agency has entered 65 projects and another entered 50 protocols. One state has entered nine projects and a university entered seven projects. We challenge organizations to enter their projects and protocols, not only to benefit the monitoring community, but also to receive recognition by their peers and to obtain useful suggestions.Contributors
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Message from the Leadership TeamWelcome to the inaugural issue of the NRMP Newsletter! We hope to periodically issue these Newsletters as another means to help promote the Natural Resource Monitoring Partnership (NRMP) and facilitate communication and collaboration within the natural resource monitoring community. A little more than one year ago the NRMP web site became operational, able to host information provided by federal, state, academic, NGO, and other organizations regarding their natural resource monitoring projects and protocols. Web services have been graciously provided by the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). Thank you NBII!It has been a humble beginning. We believe initial problems associated with on-line entry of projects and protocols have been overcome. The site is now stable and the “look-up” tools associated with various data entry fields are now all working. We are working to provide a mapped interface to display the location of monitoring projects and hope to have this available within the not too distant future. We continue to be challenged to develop the ability to “bulk-upload” projects and protocols that may be maintained by various organizations. The principle reason for this is that NRMP (the partners) identified the key information fields deemed essential to provide adequate information regarding a project or protocol e.g., management question addressed. Understandably, many existing project and protocol databases lack 1:1 data fields, thus the challenge to bulk-upload tools. We are hoping with time and effort to overcome this challenge remembering NRMP is an all volunteer effort with “contributed” resources only.
NRMP's biggest challenge remains the active engagement of the “community” in sharing with others via NRMP information regarding their monitoring projects and protocols. Project and protocol entry is not difficult. Even for the novice, with a little preparation (if information regarding your project and protocol at-hand) an entry can be made in a little over 15 minutes. This is a small time investment for the benefits that accrue, including: 1) a clear display of your natural resource monitoring projects on the web; 2) an inventory of existing monitoring projects; 3) an archive of protocols readily available to your staff as a reference; and 4) a communication tool to work with your partners to advance collaborative natural resource monitoring efforts. NRMP was built for you! If you haven't used the tools to enter a project or protocol, please vow to attempt at least one entry within the next month. If you have been entering your projects and protocols, thank you! And, please work to promote the NRMP among your constituents and partners. NRMP User Comments Ann Manning
USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center As part of our Coordinated Bird Monitoring effort we have been involved in collecting information about bird monitoring projects from Department of Defense installations across the country. This information was then entered into the NRMP. I made numerous phone calls and spoke with many biologists about their work and when I explained where their project descriptions would be stored I received many comments about how valuable and useful this database will be for them. In more than one case a biologist had been wanting to know what kinds of studies and methods were being used in similar habitats, and the NRMP database is now able to provide them searchable information to answer their questions.
 In entering the metadata records I found that there was enough flexibility in the text fields to enter the project descriptions with sufficient details to accurately explain the objectives and methods. Using the controlled vocabulary choices for other questions made the record entry process very efficient and easy, particularly when a written study description was already available. In more than one instance projects were not as well organized and defined, making it more difficult to create a project record as an outside “reporter” with virtually no institutional knowledge. It also seemed that the quality of data was reflected by the quality of the study record. When projects were well planned and had meaningful objectives right from the start, in documented form, the quality of the data and results was higher, and metadata entry into the NRMP was a snap. If every monitoring effort had the information in place that goes into an NRMP metadata record from the beginning it would certainly be positive beginning. The Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) Program staff at the Florida Caribbean Science Center of USGS recently entered more than one hundred monitoring efforts directed towards invasive species. These monitoring efforts focus mainly on aquatic species, but some terrestrial programs were included as well. Monitoring programs ranged from snails and mussels to plants, wild hogs, and snakehead fish. Monitoring efforts were included from all regions of the country including Hawaii and Alaska.
Pam Fuller, who is both the NAS program leader and the co-chair of the Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force’s (ANSTF) Monitoring and Detection Committee, recognized the NRMP tool built by NBII would fulfill a task assigned to the ANSTF’s Committee. The Committee was charged with assembling information on who was monitoring for aquatic invasive species nationwide and including information on the species targeted and area monitored. It is hoped that by getting a nationwide perspective, a monitoring team could be mobilized faster and cheaper by using an existing nearby effort and expanding its scope rather than creating an entirely separate effort. The group also hopes to learn about gaps in monitoring for particular species, such as zebra mussels, in areas where they are likely to spread.
The NAS Program maintains a nationwide database on the distribution of introduced aquatic organisms (http://nas.er.usgs.gov). Because the staff interacts with biologists around the country to obtain new distribution information, they are familiar with many of the monitoring efforts already underway. In assisting the NRMP, the NAS Program benefited by learning about new efforts and by having the opportunity to encourage new contacts to report their findings to the NAS database. |
U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.fort.usgs.gov/BRDScience/NRMP081.htm
Page Contact Information: Paul_Geissler@usgs.gov
