# Foreword 

Penelope Latham, Pacific West Region, Inventory and Monitoring Program,
US National Park Service

One if by land, and two if by sea.....

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1860

In 1860 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow chronicled our nation's most infamous
early detection warning system as he described the hanging of lanterns
in the tower of the Old North Church and the subsequent midnight ride of
Paul Revere to warn colonists of the impending British invasion. "One if
by land, and two if by sea" is the warning that nearly every American
schoolchild commits to memory. If only the early detection of invasive,
nonnative plants that threaten the integrity of national park ecosystems
were as simple to address.

This document was developed to provide guidance and insight for National
Park Service parks and other natural areas engaged in developing early
detection monitoring protocols for invasive plants. It is our hope that
this information will demystify and ease the burden for those engaged in
early detection protocol development, whether they are national parks or
other land managers faced with similar problems, rather than to be
prescriptive. There are many approaches and often little consensus
regarding how to develop early detection monitoring; however, because of
the pervasiveness of this issue and the fact that invasive species are
not place bound (they freely cross ecological boundaries, states,
nations, and continents), we have tried to provide guidance to encourage
a consistent approach to monitoring. It is our intent to facilitate
communication, and the ability to integrate and interpret results. We
hope this will result in an efficient, effective tool for combating the
considerable threat of invasive plants to native ecosystems and
biodiversity in national parks. We recognize that the task of detecting
invasive species when populations are small is complex and will require
a flexible approach to meet varying objectives, financial situations,
and ecological conditions of individual parks.

Approaches to large and complex problems are slow in coming and are
often developed in a stepwise fashion each building on and indebted to
the progress made previously. Little more than ten years ago in 1996,
the Director of the National Park Service (NPS) distributed the first
NPS plan for managing nonnative invasive plants (A Strategic Plan for
Managing Invasive Nonnative Plants on National Park System Lands). Six
key strategies were identified that included:

1)  Preventing invasions,

2)  Increasing public awareness,

3)  Conducting inventory and monitoring of nonnative plants,

4)  Conducting research and transfer technology,

5)  Integration of nonnative plant management into every aspect of park
    planning, and

6)  Management (control) of invasive nonnative plants.

Essential components of the proposed recommendations for preventing
biological invasions were an early warning system to identify and
eradicate new infestations of nonnative plants, the creation and
maintenance of park-based lists of plant species that had not yet
invaded the park but that were known to occur in the region and were
likely to invade, and cooperation with other regulatory agencies. In
2000, a detailed servicewide action plan was drafted. A revision drafted
in 2006, re-emphasized the role of prevention through early detection
and rapid response (for control and management) and specifically
identified Vital Sign monitoring networks in addition to parks as
cooperators in the prevention strategy.

The organization of 270 national parks into 32 Vital Sign Inventory and
Monitoring (I&M) Networks nationwide is the result of the Natural
Resource Challenge National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998 (P.L.
105-391) and the subsequent 2001 National Park Service Management
Policies. This legislation instructed the networks to establish baseline
information on the condition of park ecosystems through monitoring, to
determine long-term trends in park resources, and to detect changes due
to human influences.

An Invasive Species Workshop held in Fort Collins, Colorado, in June
2002 began the compilation of existing work related to developing
protocols for monitoring invasive species, adopted the North American
Weed Management Association minimum mapping standards and made
recommendations regarding adopting standards for field sampling and
monitoring methods (e.g., Elzinga et al. 1998, Hiebert 2002, Benjamin
and Hiebert 2004). In May 2003 following a survey which determined that
the majority of networks had identified Invasive Species as one of their
top three Vital Signs, the Inventory and Monitoring Advisory Council
(IMAC) appointed a working group to evaluate progress and make
recommendations for next steps. Upon presentation of these
recommendations at the National Inventory and Monitoring Annual Meeting
in Lansdowne, Virginia, August 2003, the NPS Inventory and Monitoring
networks agreed to adopt a nationwide strategic approach for monitoring
invasive plants.

Following this decision, an NPS Invasive Species Coordinator position
was established in Fort Collins. Proposals were then solicited from USGS
Status and Trends scientists to assist NPS Inventory and Monitoring
Networks with early detection. It was agreed that the project would
include developing a synthetic approach to early detection monitoring
that would provide guidance, establish standards and methodologies, and
incorporate established and state-of-the-art technologies for early
detection protocol development. This document is the result of the
two-year long collaborative effort on the part of USGS, university, and
NPS scientists to meet this need.

The following chapters include a synthesis of current knowledge
regarding invasion theory, identify Steps to Early Detection, and
provide advice and decision trees regarding the utility of various
approaches for prioritizing species and sites for early detection
monitoring at different scales. To clarify guidance incorporated in this
document, examples are provided that cover a range of different options
for early detection in several parks and networks.

The Klamath Network (Pacific West Region) example includes research
specifically developed as a "proof of concept" for prioritization and
prediction of invasive plants. The Klamath Network was selected as the
focus of this research because of the complexity of the regional
biophysical environment in which it occurs and the dramatic differences
in ecosystems that occur among the six network parks. Other examples
include approaches to early detection monitoring over large areas using
remote sensing technology (Big Bend National Park), a small park
approach to early detection monitoring using volunteers (San Francisco
Bay Area Network), and the integration of early detection techniques
into invasive plant trends monitoring across both small and large parks
(Heartland Network). Finally, the document includes a protocol template
with an outline to guide development of protocol sections and standard
language included in key areas.

We are deeply indebted to our partners and co-collaborators for the
technical aspects of this document and the persistence of their efforts
in helping to achieve a technically useful but broadly applicable
document. It is our heartfelt wish that this work will be of benefit to
many other parks, I&M networks, and conservation areas and that we will
have succeeded in furthering the ability of land managers to combat the
insidious threat of biological invasions to the integrity of native
ecosystems.

Penelope Latham

NPS Inventory and Monitoring Coordinator

Pacific West Region