National Vegetation Classification System Guidelines Project Charter

Proposed Project Name: National Vegetation Classification System (NVCS) Guidelines Project

System Owners: Refuges, Information Technology Management, and Ecological Services Division Chiefs, Washington Office

System Managers: Nancy Roeper, Biologist; Deb Southworth Green, National Spatial Data Manager; --------.

Development Team: NVCS Technical Advisory Group
(ad hoc subcommittee of the FWS GIS Steering Committee)

Steve Caicco R1 Plant Ecologist - Refuges
Ron Salz R1 Data Administrator - IRTM
Chris Best R2 Plant Ecologist - Refuges
Ron Kearns R2 Biologist - Refuges
Pauline Drobney R3 Botanist - Refuges
Mary S. Mitchell R3 GIS Coordinator
Andrew MacLachlan R5 Biologist - GIS Specialist - ES
Paul Steblein R5 Biologist - Refuges
Jaymee Fojtik R6 Biologist/ Cartographer - Realty
Steve Henry R6 Biologist - Refuges
Chuck Loesch R6 GIS Specialist - Refuges
Michael Long R6 GIS Coordinator - Fisheries
Janet Jorgenson R7 Botanist - Refuges
Steve Talbot R7 Regional Botanist - Refuges?
Al Fisher R9 Data Administrator - IRTM
Nancy Roeper R9 Biologist - Refuges
Deb Southworth Green R9 Spatial Data Manager - IRTM
-------- R9 Biologist - Habitat Conservation
------- Others

User Acceptance Team: The User Acceptance Team will be drawn from the Service's Refuges and Wildlife, Ecological Services, (Fisheries?) and GIS communities as needed. The guidelines under development will impact both data creators and data consumers, and thus will need a broad spectrum of review.

Description of Proposed Project: The primary objective is to develop guidelines to facilitate use of the NVCS for vegetation classification and mapping projects at the appropriate hierarchical level. The guidelines will include mapping protocols, crosswalks to other classification systems, and recommendations of methodologies for field work.

Providing explanatory information and tools to facilitate use of the NVCS should eventually result in an accurate and nationally consistent spatial data layer for National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) vegetation information. Vegetation information can also be developed in a nationally consistent way by other Service programs, making it possible to relate to existing databases, prepare reports, and share data with ecosystem partners.

Reason for Request: There is an increasing demand both within the Service and from partners for good quality vegetation information. Vegetation information is used for many different purposes including refuge management plans, comprehensive conservation plans, habitat conservation plans, land acquisition plans, coastal ecosystem protection plans, and endangered species recovery plans. Such information (if available) currently exists a variety of digital and hard copy formats, and is based on a variety of vegetation classification systems, many locally-derived. The data used are often of undocumented source and quality. Creating guidelines for delineating, classifying, and mapping vegetation will provide a process for creating nationally consistent vegetation information. It then becomes possible to perform scientifically accurate trend analyses or create national models for migratory bird habitat. The value of data that are available in a standard format nationally is increased when it can be related to or combined with information from existing databases and shared with ecosystem partners and allows the Service to comply with established mandates for access to data.

Guidelines will reduce the workload on offices by providing them an already tested and established process for developing vegetation information and will allow individual offices or Regions to create the data as their schedule or resources permit, but still produce compatible data. .

These guidelines will specify how to gather and process vegetation data when it is needed; they do not specify who creates the data, and can be used easily by a contractor or by an internal user.

Functional Description

Products needed to facilitate implementation include:

- Written document with NVCS purpose and overview;
- Intended and example applications;
- A comparison to other vegetation and habitat classification systems (crosswalks);
- Data collection guidelines, including potential sources of botanical expertise;
- Vegetation sampling methods;
- Mapping guidelines (for example, the recommended MMU, level in hierarchy, accuracy, minimum area and width of polygons for different application);
- Identification of project managers (stewards) to monitor and update the guidelines as needed.

Management Milestones:

May 1998 - Draft memo for Director's signature accepting NVCS as Service standard

June 29, 1998 - Draft user guidelines for release at the Service National GIS workshop
Summer 1998 - Make changes to draft guidelines with input from interested Service user community
October 1998 - Release user guidelines for interim review by any interested parties at the National Wildlife Refuge System Conference;
January 1999 - Accept comments to guidelines
April 1999 - Incorporate comments to guidelines and assemble revised guidelines for final approval

Organizations Affected: Refuges, Habitat Conservation, and Information Technology Management staff involved in vegetation identification, classification, and mapping are required for the initial review. If the guidelines are implemented and data is produced using the guidelines, potentially all Service offices and ecosystem partners could be impacted.

Relationship to other Projects, Systems, or Databases: While the guidelines themselves do not impact other systems, the potential impact if the guidelines are used to create good quality, consistent vegetation data is significant. Users of other information systems, such as RPMIS, RMIS, CIMAS, have indicated the need for consistent spatial data. Staff working on Comprehensive Conservation Plans (CCP) and Habitat Conservation Plans (HAP) are other major customers. This widespread need for the data is the reason for coordination during the reviews within Realty and Refuges offices as well as with other programs.

Privacy/Security Considerations: Most of the information involved is public domain and is already available in a less accurate rendering. The better quality data will be shared freely on the Internet as created.

Estimate of Available Time and Resources: It is difficult to estimate the time and resources involved as much of the effort put forth is not related solely to this effort: the creation and refining of data automation procedures is ongoing in the Service. This is merely a more organized effort at streamlining an existing process.

Known Constraints: There are no know constraints to the development and voluntary implementation of technical guidelines, provided the guidelines are well documented and useful. Formal adoption of the guidelines depends on demonstrating their utility.

For additional information regarding this Web page, contact Deb Southworth Green, in the Division of Information Resources and Technology Management, at Deb_Green@fws.gov

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Keywords=GIS, data, metadata, steering, veg, vegetation
Last Modified January 02, 2001 03:14 PM