The vegetation of Everglades National Park: Final report

Ruiz, Pablo; Schall, Theodore; Shamblin, Robert; Whelan, Kevin

doi:10.36967/nrr-2286460

The Everglades National Park vegetation mapping project is part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). It is a cooperative effort between the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and the National Park Service Vegetation Mapping Inventory Program (NPS VMI). The goal of this project is to produce a spatially and thematically accurate vegetation map of Everglades National Park (EVER) prior to the completion of restoration efforts associated with CERP. This spatial product will serve as a record of baseline vegetation conditions for the purpose of: (1) documenting changes to the spatial extent, pattern, and proportion of plant communities within EVER as they respond to hydrologic modifications resulting from the implementation of the CERP; and (2) providing vegetation and land-cover information to NPS park managers and scientists for use in resource management, research, and monitoring. The vegetation map of EVER covers an area of 4,482.2 square kilometers (1.108 million acres [ac]) and consists of four mapping regions: Region 1 – Shark River Slough/Long Pine Key; Region 2 – The Southeast Saline Everglades; Region 3 – The Southwest Coastal Everglades; and Region 4 – The Northwest Coastal Everglades. Region 1 was mapped by the SFWMD and USACE while Regions 2-4 were mapped by the South Florida Caribbean Network (SFCN). Photo-interpretation on the map was performed by superimposing a 50 × 50-meter (164 × 164-feet [ft] or 0.25 hectare [0.61 ac]) grid cell vector matrix over stereoscopic, 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) spatial resolution, color-infrared aerial imagery, acquired by the SFWMD in 2009, on a digital photogrammetric workstation. Photo-interpreters identified the dominant community in each cell by applying majority-rule algorithms, recognizing community-specific spectral signatures, and referencing an extensive ground-truth database. The dominant vegetation community within each grid cell was classified using a hierarchical classification system developed for this project. Additionally, photo-interpreters categorized the absolute cover of invasive species and cattails (Typha sp.) detected as either: Sparse (10–49%), Dominant (50–89%), or Monotypic (90–100%). The map contains a total of 286 discreet thematic classes with Short Sawgrass Marsh (75,956 ha, [19.7%] ); Graminoid Freshwater Prairie (62,076 ha [12.3%]) and Mixed Mangrove Forest-Mixed (47,599 ha [5.3%] being the most common vegetation types mapped. Marsh vegetation classes are the most common community types found withing the vegetation map. They account for 186,551 ha (48.3%) of the terrestrial mapped area . Forest communities (18.0%), followed by Scrub (17.8%) and Shrublands (12.8%) are the next most common community types mapped. Map accuracy, based on 1,014 randomly selected accuracy assessment points, is estimated at 89.2% with a lower 90th Percentile Confidence Interval of 87.4%.

The vegetation of Everglades National Park: Final report

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