The vegetation in America's national parks will be systematically inventoried for the first time through a partnership announced today by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. The National Park Service can then improve management and preservation practices to perpetuate the precious resources entrusted to its care.
Plant communities are associations of vegetation that reoccur across the landscape.
The lack of recognized identification standards, the Secretary added, means that forests with similar characteristics in different parks may be known by different names, impeding scientific understanding. Common standards of identification are essential to effective management. Working under the guidance of NBS and NPS, scientists are responsible for standards and methods development, aerial photography acquisition, vegetation classification, mapping and characterization, digital data base development, and overall quality assurance. All vegetation maps and descriptions developed over the course of the contract will be computerized and available to park managers to support decision making in resource management.