Vascular Plant Community Classification for Stones River National Battlefield

Nordman, Carl

The first step in any effort to monitor the “vital signs” or ecological health of a tract of land is to develop a baseline from which to measure and gauge trends. The NatureServe team established a baseline for Stones River National Battlefield in three ways:1) Ecologists from NatureServe and the Tennessee Natural Heritage Program established eleven permanently marked one-hectare circular plots within the park in a grid system and another five one hectare circular plots in ecological areas that were not covered by the initial grid-based plot layout. These permanently marked plots are available to be used by researchers on studies ranging from bird point counts to individual plant monitoring.2) Ecologists collected data on unique vegetation communities within the park and identified fifteen natural, four successional, and three exotic plant dominated vegetation associations within the park boundary. Each vegetation association is “a plant community type of definite floristic composition, uniform habitat conditions, and uniform physiognomy”(Grossman, et. al., 1998). The four vegetation associations, which are part of the Nashville Basin Limestone Glade ecological system, warrant special attention due to their relatively high global rank/rarity. The Southern Interior Low Plateau Dry Oak Forest (three vegetation associations) also warrants special attention for the same reason. Together these seven associations constitute all the natural non-successional upland vegetation associations present at Stones River National Battlefield.3) Ecologists collected and vouchered 34 new species to add to the list of species generated by Theresa L. Hogan and Michele Webber. We now count 615 documented species, varieties, or subspecies of vascular plants in the park (611 species). We estimate that over 90% of the vascular flora of the park is now documented. Species of note include the many rare or endemic cedar glade plants.

Vascular Plant Community Classification for Stones River National Battlefield

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