NPS Greater Yellowstone Inventory and Monitoring Network

The Greater Yellowstone Network, approved by charter in 2001, is one of 32 inventory and monitoring networks challenged with the responsibility of preparing Vital Signs Monitoring plans for our National Park Service (NPS) under the Natural Resource Challenge. The parks of this network, sitting astride the Montana and Wyoming border, are some of the crown jewels of the national park system. Yellowstone, the world's first national park, includes the world's finest display of geothermal features. Grand Teton holds a unique mountainscape so often photographed that most Americans can immediately recognize the outline of the Tetons. Bighorn Canyon offers an unparalleled desert and water landscape out on the edge of the northern Rockies. Ecosystems for these parks include alpine tundra, lowland desert steppe, and almost everything in between. All three parks contain outstanding—and in many cases, rare—plant and wildlife species. And each park has important water, air, geologic, biotic, and cultural resources. All these features make the parks of the Greater Yellowstone Network strongly deserving of the NPS's charge to monitor the long-term ecological health of its member parks.