Description
Climate is one of the 12 basic inventories to be completed for all National Park Service (NPS) Inventory and Monitoring Program (I&M) networks and it is a dominant factor driving the physical and ecologic processes affecting the Southern Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network (SOPN). This project was initiated to inventory past and present climate monitoring efforts in the SOPN. In this report, the authors provide the following information: – Overview of broad-scale climatic factors and zones important to SOPN park units; – Inventory of weather and climate station locations in and near SOPN park units relevant to the NPS I&M Program; – Results of an inventory of metadata on each weather station, including affiliations for weather-monitoring networks, types of measurements recorded at these stations, and information about the actual measurements (length of record, etc.); and – Initial evaluation of the adequacy of coverage for existing weather stations and recommendations for improvements in monitoring weather and climate.
