Land Cover/Natural Vegetation Communities (Group Level), Owens River Valley, DRECP
Dates
Original Data Basin Creation Date
2013-04-02 14:43:55
Original Data Basin Modified Date
2013-11-20 16:58:21
Summary
The California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) Vegetation Classification and Mapping Program (VegCAMP) and contractor Aerial Information Systems (AIS) created a fine-scale vegetation map of a portion of the western Mojave Desert in California. The mapped area is bounded to the west and south by USDA Ecoregional Subsection 322Ag of the Mojave Desert (Miles and Goudey 1997). To the east, the portion mapped by AIS (approx. 4,202,000 acres) is bounded by the borders of a vegetation map produced in 2004 for the Mojave Desert Ecosystem Program (MDEP). VegCAMP mapped a portion of the area mapped previously for the MDEP (approx. 776,000 acres) using the finer-scale rules and classification that AIS used for the larger portion (see Figure [...]
The vegetation classification follows Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and National Vegetation Classification Standards (NVCS). The classification is based on previous survey and classification work including the classification done for MDEP. An additional 98 Rapid Assessment vegetation field surveys were collected in 2011, and some additional mapping classes are based on those unclassified surveys. These classes are considered provisional until better understood (for example, the Ericameria cooperi provisional alliance). See Appendix A for the field form and protocol for the Rapid Assessment surveys.
This report and accompanying data are to be released at the end of June 2012. After this time, a review of AIS polygons and fieldwork will be performed to analyze the percentage of mapped polygons that have had some sort of field assessment related to this project. Additionally, some of the polygons that were mapped to higher levels in the NVCS hierarchy will be re-assessed and assigned to a lower level.
Please note: This dataset has been clipped to the subregion level (as defined by Dudek/ICF in "DRECP_Subareas_20110509") in order to increase performance in Data Basin.
