Yellowstone Vegetation - Consequences of Environment and History in a Natural Setting (Raster Version)

Spatial Analysis Center - Yellowstone National Park

This map shows the potential climax vegetation (habitat types) as indicated by the plants growing in the area. Plant communities of Yellowstone National Park are classified by their physical environment into units called habitat types. The result is a raster map of habitat types as defined by R. Daubenmire and described by Pfister et al. for western Montana or Steele et al. for northwestern Wyoming and southeastern Idaho. A habitat type is a set of environmental conditions (temperature, moisture, light, mineral nutrient availability, disturbance frequency, and others) that appears repeatedly across the landscape. Plant species are suited to indicate a site's location in environmental space because they integrate all the environmental factors as well as the interactions among factors. Plants with narrow tolerance limits of their ecological requirements can be used as indicators of the occurrence of those particular conditions. Thus the plant community is a good indirect indicator of a site's position in environmental space. Habitat types can be combined with similar types into larger groups, called series. Habitat types are named after the climax plant community that would develop on that site after sufficient passage of time. Two species are used in the name. The first is a species with a broad ecological tolerance that dominates the climax community. The second is a species with more specific requirements that indicates the particular place in environmental space that the habitat type occupies. The map covers the entire area of Yellowstone National Park.