Vascular plant inventory and plant community classification Mammoth Cave National Park

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. We established a baseline for Mammoth Cave National Park in three ways:1) Ecologists from NatureServe established 34 permanently marked one-hectare circular plots within the park in a grid system and another 31 permanently marked plots in unique ecological areas that were not covered by the initial grid-based plot layout. 2) Ecologists collected data on all unique vegetation communities within the park and identified 28 natural and 12 human-modified or successional vegetation associations (unique ecological assemblages of plants) within the park boundary.3) Ecologists collected and vouchered 43 species new to the park. Vegetation Mapping was done by 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. The map accuracy was assessed by comparing mapped vegetation types to field verified vegetation types at randomized evaluation points. The evaluation points were chosen prior to field work using statistical methods to ensure full representation of the range of map classes in the park. An accuracy measure was calculated for each individual map class and an overall accuracy measure was calculated for all map classes combined.

Vascular plant inventory and plant community classification Mammoth Cave National Park

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