A Kind of Magic is a three-volume novel of eco-magical realism. It's a book about transition: from childhood to adolescence; from isolation to community; from passivity to action. From fantasy to the real world. It is deliberately aimed at 4th - 6th graders, and can be read as a whole or as three short school library books. A Trick of the Light/Turtle Crossing/ThunderHawk: A Trilogy of short books for middle-grade readers; following a boy's awakening to the beauties and needs of the natural world around him, with the help of his friends, his family, his community and the mysterious spirit of the forest.

This document describes a protocol to monitor five terrestrial plant communities in seven national parks within the Pacific Island Network (PACN).

The purpose of the National Park Service (NPS) Inventory & Monitoring (I&M) Program is to develop and provide scientifically credible information on the current status and long-term trends of the composition, structure, and function of park ecosystems, and to determine how well current management practices are sustaining those ecosystems. As part of the NPS's effort to improve park management through greater reliance on scientific knowledge, a primary role of the I&M Program is to collect, organize, and make available natural resource data and to contribute to the NPS institutional knowledge by transforming data into information through analysis, synthesis, and modeling of specific key vital signs. The I&M Program defines vital signs as a subset of physical, chemical, and biological elements and processes of park ecosystems that is selected to represent the overall health or condition of park resources, known or hypothesized effects of stressors, or elements that have important human values.

Since the late 1970s, the NPS Air Resources Division (ARD) has managed a comprehensive air quality program, emphasizing the collection of credible air quality information to support scientifically sound resource management decisions in parks. In general, air quality monitoring in parks, including monitoring of atmospheric deposition, ozone, and visibility, is done in conjunction with national networks. The authors describe the atmospheric deposition monitoring protocol.

Vegetation classification and mapping was conducted at Weir Farm National Historic Site during the fall of 2003 and the summers of 2004 and 2005, creating a current digital geospatial vegetation database for the park. There are nine natural vegetation types that occur in the park; four upland forest types, one upland non-vascular type, two forested wetland types, and two wetland shrub thicket types that reflected the soil moisture conditions of the site. In addition, four anthropogenic vegetation types occurred; one successional forest and three non-forested types (two in mowed upland fields, and one herbaceous wetland seep). Each of these is described in detail in this report.

This study measured wetland trends in the conterminous United States between 1998 and 2004. The estimates of estuarine emergent area were made prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita during the summer of 2005. The Cowardin et al. (1979) wetland definition was used to describe wetland types. By design, intertidal wetlands of the Pacific coast, reefs and submerged aquatic vegetation were excluded from this study.

This study was requested by the park in recognition of the need for soils information to assist in understanding the forest ecosystem, potential fire effects, management of trails and buildings, and for interpreting the Monument's cultural landscape. Existing soils information for Cook County provided only a very broad overview, with little or no field investigation to verify soil types or provide information at a level of detail pertinent to or useful for park needs.

A review of NPS species, the national database registering plant occurrence in parks, indicated that 465 plant species occurred in Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. Of these, 148 (32%) are non-native, meaning that these plants were recently introduced through human agency. The authors detail the status of invasive plants and the resource management issue(s) for the park.

Market squid (Loligo opalescens) plays a vital role in the California ecosystem and serves as a major link in the food chain as both a predator and prey species.

The purpose of this publication is to report the findings of the Service's wetlands inventory of Rhode Island.