Part of the mission of Washington State Parks is to preserve the natural resources of Washington State – and while it’s managed land base is relatively small (~138,000 acres), it protects several rare species and plant communities, including some that occur nowhere else in the United States. We have vegetation survey data – including species lists – for the majority of our parks; additional data are available through the Washington Natural Heritage Program and iNaturalist. We are interested in an analysis of these datasets (which would require a fair amount of format conversion, reconciling name changes, and other clean-up) to answer questions such as: what proportion of Washington’s native flora is found in Washington State Parks? what proportion of these species fall into the different conservation categories defined by NatureServe (i.e. how good of a job are we doing protecting rare species? how good of a job are we doing helping keep common species common?) how are we doing with nonnative species? ….are there any spatial patterns to the data (there are a lot of questions that could be answered!!!)

Contact Andrea Thorpe: andrea.thorpe@parks.wa.gov