Field data for the Vegetation Mapping Inventory Project of Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River

This reference is an assemblage of field data collected as part the baseline vegetation inventory for the park unit. Typical files here are vegetation plot data, accuracy assessment data, field photos, PDF showing locations of vegetation plots and accuracy assessment data, and other data for this type. All vegetation plot sampling followed the USGS/NPS Vegetation Mapping Program protocols (TNC and ESRI 1994b). The Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River is considered a large park (222 km2 [86 mi2]) for which the gradient directed transect sampling (gradsect) approach should be used. The gradsect approach is a variant of a stratified random sampling strategy that intends to efficiently describe the full range of vegetation by sampling along the full range of environmental variability. Data from vegetation plots were entered into the NatureServe PLOTS 2.0 Database System on a Microsoft Access platform. In the PLOTS 2.0 database, species were assigned standardized codes and nomenclature based on the PLANTS 3.5 Database developed by the Natural Resource Conservation Service in cooperation with the Biota of North America Program (USDA, NRCS 2004). For this report, some common names listed in the PLANTS database were changed to reflect the common names typically used by ecologists and resource managers in this region.