A proposal to inventory and assess the vegetation and flora of Montezuma Castle National Monument

Phillips, Barbara

A proposal to survey the vegetation at Montezuma Castle National Monument through a botanical Resource Basic Inventory (RBI). A checklist of plants will be produced and vegetation types will be identified.This project will consist of a botanical Resource Base Inventory (RBI) of the Castle and Well units of Montezuma Castle National Monument to provide new information for management and interpretation. It will also involve the design of long-term monitoring protocols for selected components of this ecosystem. The general vegetation map of Montezuma Castle National Monument by Ruffner and Associates will be further refined using appropriate geographical referencing so that the data are compatible with a Geographic Information System (GIS) and UTM coordinates will be used for the vegetation type boundaries. Vegetation subassociations using the classification system of Brown and Lowe (1974) will provide detalled differentiation of the vegetation communities into subunits.Permanent, relocatable vegetation sampling plots will be installed in representative subdivisions of the communities and sampled to provide quantitative data regarding the plant composition. The number of plots will be sufficient to provide data with statistical validity for the unique vegetation types. This will provide ability to calculate indices of diversity within and between associations, and provide the means to assess species richness, dominance and evenness. The Monument will also have the monitoring ability to follow changes in the established plots through time. Composition of trees by size class will be noted in order to provide meaningful management data on trees such as Arizona sycamore.The checklist of plant species will provide the Monument with valuableiInformation that can be used by interpreters during nature walks and in conjunction with interpreting Pre-historic lifestyles. The substantive changes in plant nomenclature at specific, generic and family levels since McDougall and Haskell (1960) [see Lehr (1978) and Lehr and Pinkava (1980, 1982)] will be incorporated into the annotated checklist. The Monument herbarium will be augmented so that it contains a complete collection of the plant species growing in the Monument.This proposal will benefit both students and faculty as well as the reputation of Northern Arizona University and will assist the National Park Service develop a comprehensive assessment of the vegetation and flora of Montezuma Castle National Monument. Following this study it will be possible for other researchers to coordinate their study sites so that all future data collected in the Monument will be collected in uniform vegetation types.(Copied verbatim from the proposal.)