Vegetation of Shenandoah National Park in Relation to Environmental Gradients, Version 2.0
Young J, Fleming G, Cass W, Lea C. 2009. Vegetation of Shenandoah National Park in Relation to Environmental Gradients, Version 2.0. Technical Report NPS/NER/NRTR—2009/142. National Park Service, Northeast Region
A project was initiated in 2000 by the USGS Leetown Science Center (USGS-LSC), the Virginia Natural Heritage Program (VANHP), and Shenandoah National Park (SHEN) to map the park’s vegetation communities through a combination of remote sensing, spatial modeling, field data collection, and vegetation community ordination. This project was originally intended and funded as a USGS/VANHP research project to investigate newly available remote sensing methods (e.g. hyperspectral imagery) and GIS-based environmental gradient modeling (e.g. topographic moisture and light regimes) for mapping vegetation communities to the FGDC vegetation classification standard. This project was completed in 2005 (v 1.0) and revised in 2006 (v 1.1). In 2007, an opportunity was presented by the NPS to fund additional accuracy assessment fieldwork at Shenandoah. The revision of the v 1.1 map products to a v 2.0 data set resulted in the following products: 1) A new vegetation classification scheme describing 40 vegetation community types (35 natural, 3 successional, and 2 disturbed types). 2) A new map of predicted vegetation community distribution of 35 vegetation community types was produced based on 1,160 training plots and maximum entropy statistical modeling with five sets of nine-band ASTER multispectral imagery, two sets of 34 MNF-transformed bands of AVIRIS hyperspectral imagery, and 15 environmental gradient model variables. During mapping, five wetland types were dropped as they were too small relative to the minimum mapping unit (0.5 ha) to map reliably. 3) A statistically valid accuracy assessment campaign was implemented to sample all mapped vegetation classes at the required level of effort and field AA data was collected at 703 plots.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Young, John; Fleming, Gary; Cass, Wendy; Lea, Chris
- Date of Issue
- 2009-11
- Publisher
- National Park Service, Northeast Region
- Units
- MIDN , SHEN
- Keywords
- Accuracy Assessment, AVIRIS hyperspectral sensor, Classification, Community, Distribution (Biodiversity), environmental gradient, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Geology, Mapping, Presence (Biodiversity), Shenandoah National Park, Taxa List Only, Vegetation, Vegetation Inventory