Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument

Across the US, changes in water availability are altering which plants grow where. These changes are evident at a broad scale. But not all areas experience the same climate in the same way, even within the boundaries of a single national park. A new dataset gives park managers a valuable tool for understanding why vegetation has changed and how it might change in the future under different climate-change scenarios.

National park visitors are using mobile-friendly platforms like iNaturalist to collect valuable data on biodiversity. Their observations help park managers monitor and respond to emerging threats, from stinknet in Saguaro National Park to the hemlock woolly adelgid in Acadia.

Read the abstract and get the link to a published paper on how dragonfly mercury studies uncover unexpected atmospheric delivery pathways: Janssen, S.E., C.J. Kotalik, J.J. Willacker, M.T. Tate, C. Flanagan Pritz, S.J. Nelson, D.P. Krabbenhoft, D. Walters, and C. Eagles-Smith. 2024. Geographic Drivers of Mercury Entry into Aquatic Foods Webs Revealed by Mercury Stable Isotopes in Dragonfly Larvae. Environmental Science & Technology. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.4c02436

On the eve of the National Park Service’s centennial in 2016, President Barack Obama designated 87,500 acres as the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument – the first national monument to preserve the landscape and honor the history and culture of Maine’s North Woods in Penobscot County. The superintendent of the new national monument asked NPS-RTCA to assist with engaging local communities and leading various planning projects.

Each park-specific page in the NPS Geodiversity Atlas provides basic information on the significant geologic features and processes occurring in the park. Links to products from Baseline Geologic and Soil Resources Inventories provide access to maps and reports.

Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks, along with the Blue Ridge Parkway that connects them, pass through rocks from the core of the Appalachian Mountains. The mountains began forming during the Ordovician and eventually attained elevations similar to those of the Himalayas.

Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument preserves rocks and fossils from much of the first half of the Paleozoic Era, approximately 540 to 400 million years ago, when what is now the east coast of North America was growing with additions of small continental fragments. Fossils have been occasionally reported from the monument by scientists in the past, but this is the first time that a thorough inventory has been made of the monument’s fossils.

During the Paleozoic Era (541 to 252 million years ago), fish diversified and marine organisms were very abundant. In North America, the Paleozoic is characterized by multiple advances and retreats of shallow seas and repeated continental collisions that formed the Appalachian Mountains. Common Paleozoic fossils include trilobites and cephalopods such as squid, as well as insects and ferns. The greatest mass extinction in Earth's history ended this era.