Monday, September 19, 2011

Vegetation Characterization Products Now Available for Gauley River National Recreation Area

Gauley River
National Recreation Area
USGS-National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Characterization Program (VCP) documentation for Gauley River National Recreation Area has been completed and is available on the VCP Web site. Gauley River National Recreation Area products include aerial photography - graphic of orthophoto mosaic,spatial orthophoto data, and flight line index; project report - photointerpretation key, vegetation descriptions, vegetation key, photos of map class, and accuracy assessment; field data - graphic of field plots, field database, physical descriptive for plots, species list for plots, and plot photos; geospatial vegetation information - graphic of vegetation communities and geodatabase; accuracy assessment information - graphic of accuracy assessment points, contingency matrix, and AA photos;  metadata, and a link to NPS information about Gauley River National Recreation Area. The goal of the VCP is to classify and map the vegetation communities of National Parks that have a natural resource component. Complete documentation is currently available for one hundred eighteen park units and two U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuge units. The VCP is managed by theUSGS Center for Biological Informatics in cooperation with the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program. The USGS Vegetation Characterization effort includes the management and upkeep of the VCP protocols, Web-based access to the standards, and the Web-based access to NPS Vegetation Characterization program finished products.