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.

Events

5/13/2009 - 5/15/2009 - 11th Annual Southeast EPPC Conference

6/16/2009 - 6/17/2009 - World Ocean Council's Sustainable Ocean Summit

9/29/2009 - 10/4/2009 - Raptor Research Foundation 2009 Annual Conference

Did You Know...?

Post-Fire Treatment Impacts on Fine Fuels in Westside Sierra Nevada Forests
In 2004 the U.S. Forest Service Chief outlined four threats to the nation's forests and grasslands: fire, invasive species, loss of open space and unmanaged outdoor recreation.

Feature

South Central ARMI: Guide to Louisiana Amphibians

The U.S. Geological Survey's Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) has developed the following pages as a guide to the amphibian species of Louisiana as part of a monitoring effort for amphibians. The guide contains descriptions of each species along with a range map and pictures of the species when available. Check the glossary for an explanation of the terms used in these descriptions. Go to the South Central ARMI page to access the guide.

Projects

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

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

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, inluding Our Living Resources, which is a report on the "distribution, abundance, and health of our nation’s biological resources is the first product of the National Biological Service’s Status and Trends Program."

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