Vegetation maps allow land managers to inventory vegetation and monitor wildlife habitat while also providing a visual aid for management decisions. This course will lead the students through the entire process of creating a vegetation map from acquiring data, following classification guidelines, to accuracy assessments and metadata.

• Project Design
• Introduction to Vegetation classification System
• Vegetation Interpretation and Delineation
• Creating a Vegetation Classification
• Field Sampling Techniques
• Accuracy Assessments
• Application of Vegetation Maps

Day 1

• Project Design, Scoping and Planning (Discussion)
• Introduction to vegetation classification systems (Discussion)
• Preliminary Data (Discussion, Lab)
  1. Availability
  2. Costs
  3. Accessibility
• Vegetation Interpretation and Delineation Techniques (Discussion, Lab)
• Review and Design of Example Project - Vegetation Mapping on NCTC (Discussion, Lab)

• Creating a vegetation classification (Discussion, Lab)
  1. Vegetation Classification Theory
  2. A Priori Vegetation Classification
  3. Site Specific Vegetation Classification
• Field sampling techniques (Discussion, Lab)
  1. Plot Allocation
  2. Use of Vegetation Community Keys
  3. Example of a Detailed Vegetation Sampling Method
• Vegetation Interpretation for Example Project (Discussion, Lab)
  1. Summarization and analysis of Field data
  2. Creation of Site Specific Classification System.

• Completion of lab exercise (Lab)
• Accuracy assessments (Discussion, Lab)
• Applications of vegetation maps