Land cover and land use monitoring in the Klamath Network: 2016 summary for Lassen Volcanic National Park

Ives J, Snyder A, Chung-MacCoubrey A, King J, Groshong L, Mohren S. 2016. Land cover and land use monitoring in the Klamath Network: 2016 summary for Lassen Volcanic National Park. Natural Resource Report. NPS/KLMN/NRR—2016/1308. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado

Landscape spatial structure resulting from natural processes, and its variation through time, underlies the diversity and integrity of ecosystems. The composition (types and amounts of different land cover), configuration (spatial arrangement of land cover types), and connectivity determine habitat availability, the movements of organisms, and energy and material flows on a landscape. In 2016 the Klamath Network, in partnership with Southern Oregon University, completed and implemented our land cover and land use monitoring protocol (Mohren et al., in review). The goal of this monitoring effort is to support National Park Service (NPS) management of natural resources by providing relevant landscape-scale information about ecosystem composition and structure to each of the NPS units in the Klamath Network. As part of this effort, we implemented methods developed as part of the National Park Service’s NPScape project, which was designed to provide information on the status and trends of park natural resources at broad regional and ecosystem scales. Geographic Information System (GIS) tools were used to analyze largely regional- and national- level datasets at three spatial scales for the following landscape indicators: Conservation Status, Land Cover, Landscape Pattern, Housing and Population, Roads, and Disturbance. In Lassen Volcanic National Park, the landscape vegetation was primarily evergreen forest, and the land outside the park was mostly national forest. Due to several designated wilderness areas surrounding the park, this area is characterized by low populations, low housing density, and low road density. A variety of disturbances have occurred, including logging and fire. Integrating these data with finer scale projects will help provide an integrated look at ecosystem dynamics. Managers can also compare what is occurring inside the park boundaries versus outside of the park. To improve flow and readability of the report, data tables are included in the appendix.

Type
Published Report
Authors
Ives, Jace; Snyder, Allison; Chung-MacCoubrey, Alice; King, Jacob; Groshong, Lorin; Mohren, Sean
Date of Issue
2016-09
Publisher
National Park Service
Units
KLMN , LAVO , NRSS
Keywords
conservation status, density, disturbance, housing, land cover, land cover and land use monitoring, Land use, landscape pattern, monitoring, morphology, population, roads
Subjects
Ecological Framework: Landscapes | Landscape Dynamics | Land Cover and Use

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