Sumter National Forest Final Report - NatureServe

APPLICATIONS OF THE USNVC BY USDA FOREST SERVICE AND OTHER FEDERALAGENCIES OF THE UNITED STATESThe USNVC is increasingly used by the federal agencies (including Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Dept. of Defense,National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, USGS Biological Resources Division, Environmental Protection Agency, andothers), and The Nature Conservancy as a fundamental basis for ecosystem management, natural resource planning, and landmanagement. The various lower hierarchical levels of the USNVC, particularly the alliance and the association, have particularlyappropriate uses.The U.S. Forest Service, a long-time user and supporter of this classification effort, is using the alliance level to describe the existingand potential vegetation for the ecoregional provinces, sections, and subsections in the Eastern and Southern Regions (Keys et al.1995). This information is used for determining management and conservation goals. Other potential uses include using the allianceto characterize stand types in forest inventory or to characterize the habitats of wildlife species, including neotropical migrant birds,other birds, and other vertebrate animals. Alliances could easily be aggregated into the USFS “old growth types” or used to mapdominant vegetation cover.The association level is being used to by the Forest Service to describe and classify existing and potential natural vegetation.Individual National Forests throughout the country are using the community associations in the USNVC to conduct inventories of naturalplant communities. The conservation status information contained within the USNVC can be used to rank the imperilment status ofecosystems and communities and to assess the conservation needs for both rare and representative community types on NationalForest lands. Since rare species are linked to associations in the USNVC, associations can easily be used to help characterize thehabitats and habitat needs of Proposed, Endangered, Threatened, and Sensitive (PETS) species. As part of the Forest planningprocess, the associations can be used to set priorities for representation in Research Natural Areas (RNA) and Special Interest Areas(SIA). Associations can also be used to develop management prescriptions, for prescribed fire, thinning, and other land managementand restoration activities.The USGS BRD Gap Analysis Program uses the alliance level of the USNVC to map vegetation using TM satellite imagery on a statelevel. As a requirement of this program he imagery must be classified at the alliance level, and those states that have not mapped to thealliance level must describe the relationship between their classification units and the alliance units.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is interested in applying the same classification and mapping standards as the NBS/NPSVegetation Mapping Program for the wildlife refuge system. The Service believes that identifying vegetation communities throughoutthe National Wildlife Refuge System will improve the management of the System’s fish and wildlife resources. Natural communityinventories using the USNVC are currently underway on many refuges.As part of the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program, the USGS BRD/NPS Vegetation Mapping Program iscurrently involved in a long-term project to map the vegetation of all National Park units using the standard classification. This programrequires the mapping of vegetation according to the classification, using a minimum mapping unit of 0.5 hectare (about 1 acre) mapped toa standard 1:24,000 scale USGS topographic quadrangle. Alliances or plant associations must be assigned to each vegetation polygondelineated. All vegetation maps, associated vegetation plot data, and accuracy assessment points are geographically referenced and madeavailable in digital form that is GIS compatible.As part of an assessment of the status of biodiversity, the Environmental Protection Agency has sponsored reviews of naturalcommunities in both the Great Lakes region (TNC, Great Lakes Program 1994) and Great Plains (Ostlie et al. 1996). The Great Plainsreview contributed to a thorough review of the identification and status of all natural communities throughout the Great Plains. Follow-upsurveys in specific landscapes are being planned. In addition, the agency has sponsored the Midwest Oak Ecosystems Recovery Plan(Leach and Ross 1995), which uses the structure of this classification to define the Midwest oak savanna and woodland types.Structure and Format of this ReportThe descriptions in this report may vary widely in length and level of detail. Some vegetation types are well studied, and welldocumented; while others are poorly known with little or no published material available. Ecological dynamics, disturbance regimesand successional processes of some vegetation types have also been studied and documented, but for others this sort of information isscanty. The user will find some descriptions to be fairly comprehensive and complete, and others to be missing pieces of information.As part of the USNVC, these descriptions are dynamic and are continuously changing and improving as more information becomesavailable. In its current form, we consider the classification complete and accurate enough to be usable for the full variety of possiblepotential applications, and that use will inevitably result in revisions, modifications, and enhancements.Vegetation of Sumter National Forest April 30 2004Copyright © 2004 NatureServexiii