Vascular plant inventory and plant community classification for Ninety Six National Historic Site
2003. Vascular plant inventory and plant community classification for Ninety Six National Historic Site
The first step in any effort to monitor the “vital signs” or ecological health of a tract of land is to develop a baseline from which to measure and gauge trends. We established a baseline for Ninety Six National Historic Site in three ways: 1) Ecologists from NatureServe established ten permanently marked one-hectare circular plots within the park in a grid system and another five circular plots in unique ecological areas that were not covered by the initial grid-based plot layout. The permanently marked plots are available to be used by researchers on studies ranging from bird point counts to individual plant monitoring. 2) Ecologists collected data on all unique vegetation communities within the park and identified seven natural and eleven human-modified or successional vegetation associations (unique ecological assemblages of plants) within the park boundary. Two ecological communities that either exist or may have existed prior to the establishment of the park within the park boundary may warrant special attention due to their relatively high global rank/rarity. The Floodplain Canebrake is a Coastal Plain and Piedmont community that is extremely rare due to suppression of fire and grazing and changes in land use within the range of cane. The Southern Piedmont Oak Bottomland Forest is an uncommon mature wetland forest that is well developed in the floodplain areas within the park boundary. 3) Ecologists collected and vouchered 30 new species to add to the list of species generated by Dr. Michael Runyan of Lander University. We now count 365 documented species, varieties, or subspecies of vascular plants in the park (364 species). We estimate that between 86% and 100% of the vascular flora of the park is now documented. Some species of note (because of their relative scarcity on the landscape) include Oglethorpe oak (Quercus oglethorpensis), American columbo (Frasera caroliniensis), eastern narrowleaf sedge (Carex amphibola), slender looseflower sedge (Carex gracilescens), Virginia snakeroot (Aristolochia serpentaria), squarestem spikerush (Eleocharis quadrangulata), bearded skeletongrass (Gymnopogon ambiguus), and Canadian licoriceroot (Ligusticum canadense). Oglethorpe oak, eastern narrowleaf sedge, and slender looseflower sedge are considered South Carolina state “of concern” species.
- Type
- Unpublished Report
- Date of Issue
- 2003-11
- Units
- CUPN , NISI , 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