CMI first became involved with vegetation mapping on the James River National Wildlife Refuge in 1999 along with the Presquile and Rappahannock River Valley NWRs. The James River NWR was established to protect the bald eagle and provides one of the best roosting sites on the east coast. The James River NWR is predominantly forested with stands of large, mature, loblolly pine but also includes several forested and herbaceous wetlands.

Vegetation maps were created in ESRI Arc View GIS software from USGS 3.75-minute series color-infrared digital orthophotoquads. Polygons were delineated using this technique, then were attributed through interpretation and intensive fieldwork. All vegetation classes have been cross-walked to the National Vegetation Classification system.

All data are provided both in digital and hard copy. We also provide all information gathered at each point visited on the ground. In addition, we provided georeferenced digital photographs taken in the field. We also have built these layers to run with Refuge Tools – an Arc View extension created largely through this vegetation-mapping project. This set of GIS tools allows the biologist to use the vegetation maps with species habitat relationships (created through the Virginia Gap Analysis Project) to create predicted species distributions, reports on potential species occurrence, and potential shifts in species assemblage resulting from management actions.