National Capital Region Network

Natural and cultural resources in an urban landscape

The National Capital Region Network (NCRN) contains 11 parks within the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia (see inside cover): Antietam National Battlefield (ANTI), Catoctin Mountain Park (CATO), Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park (CHOH), George Washington Memorial Parkway (GWMP), Harpers Ferry National Historical Park (HAFE), Manassas National Battlefield (MANA), Monocacy National Battlefield (MONO), National Capital Parks–East (NACE), Prince William Forest Park (PRWI), Rock Creek Park (ROCR), and Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts (WOTR). Although they comprise only a small fraction of its total area, NCRN parks are among the most visited in the NPS system. The high numbers of visitors are due in part to the urban context in which many of the parks are found (Figure 2), and the parks act as important refugia in conserving remnants of the rich natural heritage disappearing from the urbanizing landscape surrounding the nation’s Capital. The network of parks act to promote healthy landscape dynamics within this landscape by providing valuable biotic source habitat and connectivity corridors. Nearly all of the parks lie within the Potomac River basin, which is a major contributing source of water to the Chesapeake Bay(Figure 3). Rivers, streams, wetlands, ponds, and seeps located in the parks contribute substantially to the overall water quality of the Bay. Park forests help to filter nutrients and sediment, stabilize soils, and moderate flooding of these streams and rivers. Forests also contribute to regional air quality by removing pollutants, fixing carbon, and buffering traffic and other noise pollution. Forest regeneration can be observed in many of the parks, while others maintain large expanses of grassland habitat, which serve as valuable habitat for the region’s imperiled grassland bird populations. In total, NCRN parks cover more than 75,000 acres and span four physiographic regions: Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont Plateau, Blue Ridge Mountains, and Appalachia. They contain a variety of forest, grassland, and wetland ecological communities, which support a diverse mixture of fish, bird, and amphibian species. Among the hundreds of species of concern identified by the parks, four are federally listed as threatened or endangered, including the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), Harperella (Ptilimnium nodosum), small-whorled pogonia (Isotria medeoloides), and Hay’s Spring amphipod (Stygobromus hayi).

Figure 2. The relative size of the 11 national parks within the National Capital Region Network, from largest (top) to smallest (bottom). The horizontal position of the park acreage bar is indicative of the surrounding watershed land use (urban, rural, and forest).

Figure 3. The National Capital Region Network parks are largely within the Potomac River watershed, the second largest watershed of the Chesapeake Bay. Source: J. Runde, NPS.