Applying the National Vegetation Classification in the National Park Service: Synergies between classification and mapping

Background/Question/Methods

The National Park Service (NPS) has applied the National Vegetation Classification (NVC) to mapping and management since 1994. Throughout this period, the NPS has gained experience in applying the NVC to mapping and to better integrate vegetation taxonomy with vegetation inventory, including mapping. Recently, the advent of the 2008 version of the NVC, with the considerable revision of the hierarchy has provided new challenges.

Results/Conclusions

We show how vegetation classification and mapping can complement and inform each other. We investigate some early evaluations of the performance of the new NVC hierarchy in providing a flexible means of mapping and how mapping provides feedback in the scaling and assignment of vegetation types.