Smokies celebrates 20 years of new discoveries
A scientist collects algae for documentation. NPS photo
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is celebrating 20 years of conducting biodiversity inventories, with the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory and its nonprofit partner Discover Life in America both created in 1998.
Since then, biologists have documented thousands of plants and animals and identified nearly 1,000 new species previously unknown to science.
“We are grateful for the partnership between the park and DLIA, and the variety of institutions and individuals that have participated in this project,” said Superintendent Cassius Cash. “This has been a tremendous scientific effort to help us better understand the Smokies and how we might better protect it for the next generation of owners.”
Prior to the ATBI, nearly 10,000 species had been documented in the park; that number has now nearly doubled. New species to science found during the ATBI include 31 moths, 41 spiders, 78 algae, 64 beetles, 29 crustaceans, 58 fungi, 21 bees and their relatives, 18 tardigrades and 270 bacteria. These collection records give managers a much better understanding of which species exist in the park and what environmental conditions they require.
Numerous ATBI-related education events and workshops in the past 20 years have involved more than 200,000 students and 6,500 teachers, with more than 1,000 volunteers contributing more than 60,000 hours to the project. This scientific effort has produced a baseline for one of the most diverse ecosystems in the United States. Park managers now have a better understanding of the resources, and can better predict how changing conditions in the future may impact them.
