Vegetation Information for the GRSM Vegetation Inventory Project
2004. Vegetation Information for the GRSM Vegetation Inventory Project
density databases and associated maps of the 2000 km2 Great Smoky Mountains National Park were developed by the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science at The University of Georgia in support of resource management activities of the U.S. National Park Service. Overstory vegetation was identified to the association level and crosswalked to the finest division of the National Vegetation Classification System (NVCS) protocol for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) – National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Mapping Program. Understory vegetation was identified using an association-level classification system developed in this project that included density estimates when possible. With terrain relief exceeding 1700 m and continuous forest cover over 95 percent of the Park, the requirement to use 1:12,000 and 1:40,000-scale color infrared aerial photographs as the primary data source for vegetation interpretation created a photogrammetric challenge. Challenges included lack of suitable ground control, excessive relief displacements and over 1000 photographs needed to cover the study area. In addition, Great Smoky Mountains National Park contains the world’s most botanically diverse temperature zone forest and required the creation of a detailed, hierarchical classification system. For these reasons, a combination of analog photointerpretation, digital softcopy photogrammetry, geographic information system (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS)- assisted field data collection procedures were employed in the construction of the vegetation databases. Once complete, the overstory and understory vegetation databases were input to rulebased GIS models for analysis of forest fire fuels, percent canopy and understory density. All together, the overstory and understory vegetation data sets total 513 mb of digital data, while fire products of fuel model classes, leaf-on percent canopy, leaf-off percent canopy and understory density total 605 Mb. Hardcopy maps tiled by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 7.5-minute topographic quadrangle (all or portions of 25 quads are contained in GRSM) were plotted at 1:15,000 scale for overstory and understory vegetation. These maps depict the full detail of the 170 and 196 unique, association-level classes in the overstory and understory, respectively. The overstory database contains nearly 50,000 polygons (513 Mb of data) and the understory database contains nearly 25,500 polygons (605 Mb). Generalized overstory and understory vegetation data sets with approximately 24 classes each were created using GIS reclassification commands and used to produce 1:80,000-scale overview maps of the entire park. Fire fuel model, percent canopy (leaf-on and leaf-off) and understory density data sets also were used to produce park-wide maps.
- Type
- Unpublished Report
- Date of Issue
- 2004-07
- Units
- GRSM , VMI
- Keywords
- Accuracy Assessment, Aerial Photography, alliances, Associations, community association, Digital Orthophoto, Digital Spatial Database, DOQ, DOQQ, Field Data, flight line, GIS, GPS, habitat mapping, Inventory Projects, Landcover, Landscape, National Park, National Park Service Inventory, National Vegetation Classification Standard, National Vegetation Classification System, NVCS, Orthophoto, Plots, U.S. National Vegetation Classification, USNVC, USNVCS, Vegetation Inventory, Vegetation Inventory Report, Vegetation Map Report, Vegetation Mapping, Vegetation Plots