Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This part of the Bay Area is considered one of the top areas in the world for
biodiversity.
We have an incredible diversity of plant species here. We have
over six hundred native plant species and over three hundred non-native ones.
In order to map plant communities, one first has to define them.
So one of the first steps that we had to undertake
in figuring out how to map the plant communities
was to describe them.
Plant communities being the combination of plant species that occur
in any one given area.
When you have to plant communities that are growing next to each other,
they sort of flow into each other. There isn't sharp line usually where you can
say 'end of one of the start of the next one.'
What you'll usually see is, for example something like, if you were to look at a
coyote brush shrubland,
you would see an area with really,really dense coyote brush that would be maybe
hard to walk through, and then it would get sparser and sparser
and then you would see more grasses,
and then gradually you would have a grassland.
Somewhere along that boundary is, is a line that needs to be drawn to label
one as a coyote brush shrubland and one as a grassland.
And the next step after
deciding what the composition of those plant communities are and
assigning preliminary names to them was to design a key.
A key that field crews could take out
and quickly use to
identify the plant community they were standing in on the ground.
The photo interpreters have an incredible responsibility
in this project.
They actually have to look at a aerial photos that were taken from about ten
thousand feet
and discriminate subtle differences
in the vegetation patterns
they see on the image.
They have to apply labels to each
polygon that they draw
on an aerial photo.
The photo interpreter is using a stereo scope.
This allows them to view
the aerial photos in three dimensions
and it makes
discriminating the plant communities
a lot easier.
It's often the arrangement of plant communities on the landscape that drive
how wildlife interact with the landscape and how disturbance processes such as
fire interact with the landscape.
This map of a tool to help us target
areas of non-native species
to remove.
Another important application of the vegetation map is to simulate
the potential effects of fire on the landscape.
There's a software package that we can actually apply fire on the virtual
landscape inside the computer and watch how it burns.
The vegetation map is an absolutely essential component of that process
because each vegetation type burns differently.
We have a lot of detail data that we can now use to simulate fire.
Having one vegetation map is really useful as far as its application for
fire management,
tracking invasive species, mapping wetlands, describing wildlife habitat.
Fifteen years from now when we have another vegetation map, we'll be able to
study the effects of global climate change on our plant communities,
we'll be able to
look and see if new invasive species from other parts of the world have taken over
areas that used to be occupied by native species,
and we'll be able to, we'll be able to study the effects
of how our management,
specifically in regards to fire, has changed
the juxtaposition of plant communities on the landscape.