Vegetation Classification and Mapping Project Report - the USGS

tsugae), large numbers of Park visitors, arson/accidental forest fires and exotic diseases (e.g.,
chestnut blight, dogwood anthracnose, beech bark disease, butternut canker and, potentially,
sudden oak death), Park managers needed analysis tools to assist them in the preservation of
valuable resources. Consequently, in 1999, the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science
at The University of Georgia entered into a Cooperative Agreement with the NPS to create a
detailed digital database for GRSM that includes both overstory and understory vegetation and
an analysis of fuels that can cause forest fires in the Park.
Methodology
The main requirement for the project was to produce a vegetation database and associated
maps in vector format that contained polygons for over 150 overstory and understory plant
communities plotted to within approximately + 5 to + 10 m of their true ground locations.
Overstory vegetation was mapped using more than 1000 color infrared aerial photographs of
1:12,000 scale in film transparency format recorded with a Wild RC20 photogrammetric camera,
f = 15 cm) in late October by the U. S. Forest Service. The fall photos were acquired when the
leaves were still on the trees (leaf-on) and displayed a color diversity that allowed the vegetation
communities/species to be identified (Table 1, Figure 3). Relief displacements were a major
problem, in some cases reaching more than 40 mm on the 23 x 23 cm format photographs
(Jordan, 2004; Attachment A).
Figure 3. An example of a large-scale color infrared aerial photograph recorded in October 1997
and used for photo interpretation of vegetation detail.
12