The Data Strike Team in 2025. Left to right: Issac Quevedo (CEMML Team Lead), Alexa Serrantes (Student Conservation Association Intern), Daniel Woods (SCA Intern), Judd Patterson (NPS National Data Manager), and Melina Kompella (SCA Intern). Photo credit: Kirk Sherrill, San Francisco Bay Area Network Data Manager, NPS. BY JODI PETERSON
From Acadia’s coastal headlands to the geysers of Yellowstone to the lava fields and cinder cones at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes, our national parks are the heritage of all Americans and a haven for wildlife and rare ecosystems.
Not surprisingly, maintaining that grandeur requires deep knowledge and understanding. Sound scientific research and data are needed to monitor the health of our parks and “preserve (them) unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations”, as the National Park Service’s mission states. But managing these lands so that millions of visitors don’t inadvertently harm the very things they’ve come to see is an increasingly complex task.
That’s where CEMML comes in. CEMML works with the NPS to help ensure that data gathered in parks is available for park scientists and other researchers to use. The NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program, mandated by Congress in 1998, organizes more than 300 park units into 32 networks, based on similarities in the parks’ geography, wildlife, and natural resources.
The Inventory and Monitoring program develops baseline data for each park in a network, to describe the natural resources that our parks contain today — plants, animals, soils, water sources, and more. Over time, the program tracks selected “vital signs” for each park, to reveal patterns that can inform sound long-term management. The data collected have helped park managers respond to coral loss in the Virgin Islands, ozone pollution in Eastern parks, and mercury threats to raptors in Alaska.
Because such changes often happen slowly, managers can use monitoring results to take action before trends turn into problems. The research also provides a vital resource for scientists working at other federal and state agencies, universities, and nonprofits. Furthermore, monitoring information, combined with public education, can help nearby communities deal with larger environmental health issues.
While scientific research has been conducted in the I&M networks for the past 30 years, there hasn’t been much emphasis on data publication. CEMML’s Issac Quevedo, who coordinates the data publication team, is helping to lead a push to standardize the data and disseminate it publicly. “Among scientists, there’s been a general cultural shift toward open science and open data. The acronym for this is FAIR — making science Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable,” Quevedo notes. When research results meet the FAIR criteria, they can be shared in multidisciplinary analysis and modeling efforts, and can spark collaboration among scientists.
Quevedo’s group is known as the Data Strike Team. Much of the team’s work is carried out by three interns from the Student Conservation Association, who are funded through the I&M Central Support Office. “Without our interns, we couldn’t have gotten much done,” said Quevedo. “They were all so enthusiastic, productive, and intelligent.” His group also had support from the NPS National Data Manager and the Data Science team.
Each year, the Data Strike Team reaches out to some of the 32 park networks where ecologists, data managers, and technicians are engaged in research. In 2025, they collaborated with 8 different networks to assist them with publishing their results. The Data Strike Team visits the networks in person, talking with the scientists and subject matter experts to understand their methods and why the resources being studied are important for the park. They gather datasets and convert sometimes-messy field observations into standardized, discoverable knowledge. “In these visits, we’ve found that in-person connection can really help streamline and support the entire science lifecycle at these networks, from data collection to publication and dissemination,” Quevedo said.
Last year, the team traveled to the Cumberland-Piedmont Inventory and Monitoring Network office at Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky. This network, which comprises 14 national parks across 8 states, focuses on aquatic, cave, and terrestrial ecosystems. The CEMML team joined NPS researchers to help with cave bat and cave cricket counts in a cavern that is closed to the public. “We were fitted with night-vision goggles and infrared cameras,” recalled Quevedo. “We got a real understanding of how data on these species is collected, and its importance to the park.”
Like other public land agencies, the National Park Service must continually balance resources, evolving priorities, and staffing needs. Despite these challenges, the I&M Program is positioned to expand access to high-quality park science. Quevedo notes that even with budget constraints, federal expectations for data transparency and reproducibility remain strong, guided by frameworks like the OPEN Government Data Act and Executive Order 14303, “Restoring Gold Standard Science.”
The Data Strike Team’s success has been recognized across I&M—scientists and data managers at the networks visited are now better equipped to support publication of their science, and the team has facilitated new cross-network collaborations. Due in part to this success, the I&M division plans to increase data science support, including adding another 10 data scientists through CEMML to support all 32 Networks. The team’s lasting impact is reflected through the continued development of data science support within the NPS, leading to better management and conservation decisions that can help to preserve the federal lands and national parks all Americans cherish.