Plant Community
Classification and Mapping at the Idaho National Laboratory Site
Background
Accurate classification and mapping of vegetation communities
have become increasingly important tools for conservation
management. By understanding the distribution and condition of
plant communities on a landscape, a number of conservation goals
can more easily be met including:
Determining which community types are intrinsically rare
or have been severely degraded
Identifying the best remaining occurrences of natural
communities across their geographic ranges
Development of habitat suitability models for predicting
species occurrences, and
Classifying areas for their importance in conservation
management planning.
Previous vegetation maps of the INL Site are inadequate to
serve these conservation management planning goals because they
are outdated. The most recent effort was almost twenty years ago
and does not capture important changes that have occurred since
that time including fires, sagebrush die-off and invasion by
non-native plants. Also, methodologies for vegetation classification
and mapping have been refined and standardized since those
earlier maps and will allow for continuity between classification
on the INL Site and on neighboring lands managed by other
agencies. Among others, those standards include the U.S.
National Vegetation Classification System (USNVC) and the Federal
Geographic Data Committee spatial data transfer and metadata
standards.
Understanding the distribution and condition of plant
communities on the INL Site will support the Conservation
Management Plan through habitat mapping, development of Habitat
Suitability Indices and will help to focus surveys for sensitive
species. Additional benefits to land management at the INL Site
include guiding revegetation and weed management efforts,
increasing the efficiency of assessing environmental impacts and
siting plots for research, and inventory and monitoring
activities. It will also serve as an important background
database for research on the National Environmental Research
Park.
Objectives
The overall goal of vegetation community classification and
mapping is to assess the distribution of plant communities on
the INL Site. Specific objectives are to:
Determine the community types present on the INL Site
Determine the distribution of those community types on
the landscape, and
Conduct an accuracy assessment of the resulting map.
The approach planned includes two parallel processes (plant
community classification and delineating mapping units) that are
brought together in the final step to produce the map.
The plant community classification process includes collection of
new field data from many locations representing distinct
community types. The final classifications will be based on these
field data analyzed using ordination and cluster analysis. These
results will then be cross-walked to the USNVC vegetation
associations.
The delineation and mapping process begins by collecting new
color-infrared aerial imagery in a digital format. That imagery
is then processed using image analysis software and other
techniques to define areas of similarity in the imagery.
The next step will be to bring these two processes together
by linking the community classifications to the mapping units
derived from the aerial imagery. It is important to note that in
some cases there may be more than one association linked to a
single mapping unit and vice-versa. This allows for a
consideration of vegetation associations that occur as a mosaic
at a finer scale than can be delineated using this process.
Finally, we will conduct an accuracy assessment by selecting
sites from the new map and collecting field data at those sites.
The final products will include a report describing the plant
community classes existing on the INL Site and a GIS database of
plant communities on the INL Site at multiple geographic scales
suitable for use with the Conservation Management Plan.
Accomplishments Through
2007
The only activity scheduled in 2007 was the
collection of new aerial imagery. Due to the extremely dry
conditions across the INL Site this spring, the originally
scheduled image acquisition was cancelled and postponed
until spring of 2008. Following a few days of heavy
consistent rainfall in June, we visited representative
vegetation communities across the INL Site and determined
that the influx of moisture resulted in a response in the
vegetation that would likely assist with image classifications.
On June 15, color-infrared digital imagery was collected at
1 m ground sample distance across the entire INL Site.
We began Quality Assurance/Quality Control
(QA/QC) assessments of the imagery to determine that it met
our data quality requirements. Following the initial spatial
accuracy assessment, the imagery appears to have about 1 m
or less horizontal accuracy.
Results
Because the project is in the initial data
collection phase, results are not yet ready to be reported.
Plans for Continuation
In 2008, we plan to begin the two major
efforts of classification and delineation. Using pre-existing
data a preliminary vegetation community classification,
necessary for the field data collection, is expected to be
completed in May 2008. Field data collection is expected to
occur in June, July, and August of 2008. Data analysis to
define community classification is expected to begin in the
fall of 2008.
The delineation effort is expected to start
in the spring of 2008 and should be completed by spring
2009. Further refinements and additional delineations may
occur following the accuracy assessment to produce the final
map.
Linking the plant community classification to
the delineated map is expected to occur in winter of 2009
with field accuracy assessments to occur in spring and summer
of 2009. The final report and project completion is expected
in 2010.
Publications, Theses, Reports, etc.
Because the project has just begun, no
publications or reports have been produced.
Investigators and Affiliations
Roger D. Blew, Ecologist,
Environmental Surveillance, Education and Research Program, S.M.
Stoller Corp, Idaho Falls, Idaho
Amy D. Forman, Plant
Ecologist, Environmental Surveillance, Education and Research
Program,
S.M. Stoller Corp, Idaho Falls, Idaho
Jeremy P. Shive, GIS/Remote
Sensing Specialist and Wildlife Biologist, Environmental
Surveillance, Education and Research Program, S.M. Stoller Corp,
Idaho Falls, Idaho
Funding Sources
U.S.
Department of Energy, Idaho Operations Office.
