Forest Mapping, Visualization and Analysis in National Parks of the Southeastern United States

M. Madden

Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science (CRMS), Department of Geography, The University of Georgia

The Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science (CRMS) at The University of Georgia has worked cooperatively with the National Park Service (NPS) over the past ten years to create digital vegetation databases for National Park units of the southeastern United States. In Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM), for example, overstory and understory forest communities were interpreted and compiled from more than 1,200 color infrared (CIR) aerial photographs (1:12,000- and 1:40,000-scale, respectively) acquired over 2,000 km2 of mountainous terrain. The CRMS is currently mapping forest cover in 13 additional National Park units including Mammoth Cave National Park, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. In order to accommodate the complex vegetation patterns found in these diverse parks, classification systems suitable for use with the aerial photographs and containing overstory and understory association-level classes are created jointly by CRMS, NPS and NatureServe ecologists. Upon completion of the databases, spatial analyses are conducted to assist Park managers with a variety of environmental issues. This paper will discuss methodologies used to create the forest databases. It will also demonstrate some of these GIS analyses such as analysis of fire fuels for predicting fire behavior, visualization and assessment of vegetation distributions related to environmental factors and the investigation of landscape patterns that may influence forest vulnerability to destructive exotic insect pests.

Keywords: GIS, Landscape Analysis, Aerial Photographs

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