Vegetation classification and mapping of Assateague Island National Seashore

Sneddon, Lesley; Menke, John; Berdine, Ashton; Largay, Ery; Gawler, Sue

The NPS Vegetation Mapping Inventory Program was first established in response to the National Park Service’s Natural Resources Inventory and Monitoring Guideline issued in 1992. The objective of the NPS Vegetation Mapping InventoryProgram was to develop methods to generate vegetation data in GIS format using a standard hierarchical classification scheme. A pilot study of the NPS Vegetation Mapping Inventory Program was first undertaken at Assateague Island National Seashore (ASIS) beginning in late 1993. This pilot project was in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and under the original program name called the “USGS-NPS Vegetation mapping Program.” Environmental Science Research Institute (ESRI), the prime contractor, subcontracted the mapping firm Aerial Information Systems (AIS) to conduct the photointerpretation of leaf-on color infrared (CIR) stereo aerial photographs commissioned by ESRI. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) was also subcontracted by ESRI to develop the standard vegetation classification to be mapped at the park. The vegetation was to be classified using a standardized framework applied across the United States, known then as the U.S. Standard National Vegetation Classification System. This system drew from a hierarchical framework based on a modification of the UNESCO Vegetation Classification (1973) drafted by regional ecologists at The Nature Conservancy (1994). At the same time, a classification at the proposed Alliance level of this hierarchical framework was being developed in the eastern region of The Nature Conservancy (Sneddon et al. 1994), funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Gap Analysis Program. Both of these works provided the foundation upon which the classification of the Assateague Island National Seashore vegetation was built. This, in turn, became an important contribution to the classification that came to be known as the US National Vegetation Classification, first published in 1998 (Grossman et al. 1998).

Vegetation classification and mapping of Assateague Island National Seashore

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