Salt Creek is the only perennial stream in the park besides the Colorado and Green Rivers. It has been the subject of three studies by various independent researchers who attempted to determine the effects of vehicular traffic on the ecosystem. All of these studies, although neither well funded nor extensive, found deleterious ecological effects of the road and its use. The extensive literature on the effects of such roads on ecosystem processes has also shown many negative consequences, especially in arid environments. These include increased erosion, habitat destruction, soil and water pollution, noise pollution, exotic invasions, and wildlife elimination and dispersion.
With the road now closed and left to the forces of nature, the park Division of Resource Management has initiated a riparian monitoring program to document ecological change and natural recovery in Salt Creek. In 1998, the park established 12 permanent plots in Salt Creek that record biological, hydrologic, erosion, and vegetation features as they appear now. The park plans to measure these same features again in the future, possibly every three to five years. It also plans to establish plots in the section of Salt Creek that is still open to vehicles and in similar adjacent canyons.
The monitoring program has many objectives and methods. First, the park wants to determine any change in vegetation composition, cover, and structure at each plot using a cross-sectional, line-intersect method. The park plans to measure, photograph, and map stream channel characteristics. Permanent panoramic photo-points will be set up above and in the stream channel at each plot. Aquatic macroinvertebrate populations will be monitored along both open and closed sections of the road, and a permanent bird survey transect will be set up in the closed section of Salt Creek. Amphibian and insect surveys may also be added in 1999. Finally, the park plans a Riparian Functioning Condition Analysis, developed by the Bureau of Land Management, at each site to assess the quality of the riparian condition by examining vegetation, hydrology, and erosion.
This study is the first of its kind in the semiarid environment of the Colorado Plateau. Now in its infancy, the monitoring program is envisioned as long-term and will add much to the ecological understanding of riparian recovery and change in an arid environment following disturbance.
Photo Credit: Southeast Utah Group, Charlie Schelz
charlie_schelz@nps.gov
Biologist, Southeast Utah Group; Moab, Utah
Back to Chapter 2: NPS Science
Shoreline studies at Padre Island point to trash sources
by John Miller
White abalone: Going, going, gone?
by Gary E. Davis
Science-based planning at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
by John Neal and George Oviatt
Recurrent themes of water resources management plans
by David L. Vana-Miller
Program Center takes on geologic inventories
by Bruce Heise and Joe Gregson
Bats surveyed at Grand Canyon
by Elaine Leslie
Survey research provides management information
by Jean E. McKendry