Carlsbad Caverns

Wrangell-St. Elias

Mesa Verde

Biscayne

This project supports the National Park Service¿s Vegetation Inventory Program (VIP), a cooperative effort between the National Park Service and the U. S. Geological Survey to classify, describe, and map vegetation communities in more than 270 national park units across the United States.

As

Death Valley National Park

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one of the 12 basic inventories funded by the NPS Inventory and Monitoring, the Vegetation Inventory produces high-quality, standardized maps and associated data sets of vegetation and other land-cover occurring within parks.

These complement a wide variety of resource assessment, park management, and conservation needs.

The Vegetation Inventory will enhance the public understanding of the Mojave National Preserve (MOJA) and Death Valley National Park (DEVA) by producing detailed, park-wide vegetation maps.The Mojave Desert Network Inventory and Monitoring Program (MOJN I&M) coordinates the development of vegetation inventories for objective of this Agreement is for the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) to provide botanical support for the vegetation inventories of MOJA and DEVA.

Each inventory is a multi-step and multi-year process that involves the skills and interactions of several cooperators, including staff at MOJN I&M, VIP, MOJA and DEVA, a mapping team that specializes in plant community mapping, botanists who specialize in vegetation classification, and other botanists or ecologists contracted to support the projects.

The CNPS developed the vegetation classification for DEVA, MOJA, and Lake Mead National Recreation Area (LAKE) with associated digital vegetation databases, field keys, and descriptions of the vegetation types, adhering to the standards of the National Vegetation Classification (NVC) and A Manual of California Vegetation (2009).

The NPS contracted with a mapping contractor to prepare the vegetation maps for DEVA and MOJA.

The mapping contractor began early stages of mapping for MOJA in 201 3. The mapping team will coordinate all aspects of the mapping including photo interpretation, image segmentation, creating the GIS layers, and preparing the final project deliverables.

A botanist at CNPS familiar with the vegetation classification will work with mapping personnel to develop map classes based on the vegetation classification and identify appropriate map units for vegetation types that cannot be mapped at the alliance or association level and must be aggregated into vegetation complexes or mosaics.

Vegetation plot data will be collected by MOJN I&M (or other cooperators) for the map validation and accuracy assessment.

In preparation for that field work, MOJN I&M (or other cooperators) will create park-specific vegetation descriptions and field keys based on the DEVA-LAKE-MOJA classification of vegetation alliances and associations prepared by CNPS, as well as a field methods manual.

The CNPS botanist will provide botanical support during the validation and accuracy assessment by helping interpret the vegetation classification products and providing local Mojave Desert flora expertise.