National Park Service Vegetation Inventory Program: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan

Hop, Kevin; Drake, Jim; Lubinski, Sara; Menard, Shannon; Dieck, Jennifer

The National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Inventory Program (VIP) is an effort to classify, describe, and map existing vegetation of national park units for the NPS Natural Resource Monitoring (I&M) Program. The NPS VIP is managed by the NPS Biological Resources Management Division and provides baseline vegetation information to the NPS Natural Resource I&M Program. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Vegetation Characterization Program lends a cooperative role in the NPS VIP. The USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center, NatureServe, NPS Great Lakes Network, and NPS Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore have completed vegetation classification and mapping of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SLBE) and surroundings. Photointerpreters, ecologists, and botanists collaborated to identify and describe vegetation types within the National Vegetation Classification Standard (NVCS) and to determine how best to map them by using aerial photographs. The team collected 120 vegetation sampling plots within the SLBE project extent. Furthermore, data from 1,024 accuracy assessment (AA) sites were collected (of which 1,016 were used to test accuracy of the vegetation map layer). These data sets led to the identification of 51 floristic types (of which 50 are at the association level and one is at the alliance level) in the NVCS at SLBE. Additional vegetation types are recognized at the group level of the NVCS. A total of 75 map classes (including map-class phases) were developed to map the vegetation and general land cover of SLBE and environs, including the following: 67 map classes representing natural/semi-natural vegetation types at various levels in the NVCS, four map classes representing cultural vegetation (e.g., developed lands) in the NVCS, and four map classes representing non-vegetation features (e.g., open-water bodies). Features were interpreted by using high-quality stereoscopes over light tables and 1:12,000-scale, color-infrared aerial photographs dated October 2007 (during fall leaf change). Polygon units were mapped to a 0.5-ha minimum mapping unit. An ancillary set of 1:12,000-scale, true-color aerial photographs dated April 2007 (during leaf-off conditions) covering the entire SLBE lands were used for additional reference during mapping. The interpreted data were digitally and spatially referenced, making the spatial database layers usable in geographic information systems. A geodatabase containing various feature-class layers and tables show the locations of vegetation types and general land cover (vegetation map), vegetation plot samples, AA sites, project boundary extent, and aerial photographic centers. The feature class layer for the SLBE vegetation map provides 9,296 polygons of detailed attribute data covering 33,740.7 ha, with an average polygon size of 3.6 ha. Of the area mapped, 8,886 polygons (95.6%) represent natural/semi-natural types in the NVCS, encompassing 26,775.2 ha (79.4%) of the total map extent.

National Park Service Vegetation Inventory Program: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan

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