Vascular plant inventory, vegetation community classification, mapping, and accuracy assessment report information for Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, as part of the NPS Vegetation Mapping Inventory Program

The inventory report for Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park covers the NPS Inventory and Monitoring program's vegetation mapping program. Ecologists from NatureServe established 11 permanently marked one-hectare circular plots within the park in a grid system and another 6 permanently marked plots in unique ecological areas that were not covered by the initial grid-based plot layout. The permanently marked plots are available to be used by researchers on studies ranging from bird point counts to individual plant monitoring. Ten additional quickplots (non-permanent) were established to further document unusual or ecologically significant associations. Ecologists collected and vouchered 350 species new to the park. These vouchered species and a handful of unvouchered observations were added to an existing list of 211 species that included vouchers from projects done by earlier researchers. They now count 568 documented species, varieties, or subspecies of vascular plants in the park (553 if not including varieties and subspecies). They estimate that between 92.5% and 100% of the vascular flora of the park is now documented. Several species considered vulnerable in the state of Kentucky were found during sampling. At least 65 of the species documented were non-native. The mapping report describes the vegetation mapping procedures employed by the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science (CRMS), Department of Geography, University of Georgia. Using the National Vegetation Classification System (NVCS) developed by Natureserve, with additional classes and modifiers, overstory vegetation communities for each park were interpreted from stereo color infrared aerial photographs using manual interpretation methods. Using a minimum mapping unit of 0.5 hectares (MMU = 0.5 ha), polygons representing areas of relatively uniform vegetation were delineated and annotated on clear plastic overlays registered to the aerial photographs. Polygons were labeled according to the dominant vegetation community. The accuracy assessment report describes the map accuracy. For ABLI, the overall accuracy of the final map, which considered points as a match if the vegetation observed on the ground matched any of the dominant, secondary, or tertiary vegetation types attributed to the map by the mapmaking team, is 80%, with a kappa statistic of 0.77 (77%). This number meets the 80% accuracy standard of the NPS. A stricter analysis of the data, which considered a point a match only if the vegetation observed on the ground matched the dominant vegetation type attributed by the mappers, showed an overall accuracy of the map of 72% with a kappa statistic of 0.67 (67%) for natural communities.

Vascular plant inventory, vegetation community classification, mapping, and accuracy assessment report information for Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, as part of the NPS Vegetation Mapping Inventory Program

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