Abstract
Locally derived maps of pre-European settlement vegetation patterns (Biophysical Setting-BpS) and Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) were compared to concomitant products from LANDFIRE for the Wassuk Range in western Nevada, USA. While Biophysical Settings between the two sources matched approximately half of the time, only 2.5 % of the area matched both FRCC and BpS simultaneously. The poor FRCC performance is largely due to undetected and extensive cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) cover, overestimation of perennial native grass in extensive shrublands, and mapping confusion between true pinyon-juniper woodlands and areas where trees have encroached into native shrublands. LANDFIRE National products should be useful to resource-limited managers where sufficient training plots were available to the project, but we include practical guidance for using LANDFIRE spatial products in areas where the LANDFIRE project had insufficient ground plot information.
Highlights
The Wassuk Range project area (141 000 ha; Figure 1) is representative of western Great Basin mountain ranges with clearly defined zonal vegetation types distributed from the alpine summit of Mount Grant to the saline valley bottoms
The LANDFIRE project utilized LANDSAT Thematic Mapper imagery, the latest published mapping, and modeling techniques coupled with an extensive database of existing ground plots to create the Biophysical Setting (BpS) and Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) spatial layers
Differences between the steps used by Provencher et al (2008) and this team were the result of a larger mapping area, availability of new software to calculate FRCC and associated products, quantitative vegetation models updated from LANDFIRE to calculate reference conditions, use of LANDSAT Thematic Mapper instead of higher resolution Ikonos imagery, and conducting FRCC mapping using a different landscape summary unit
Summary
Derived maps of pre-European settlement vegetation patterns (Biophysical Setting-BpS) and Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) were compared to concomitant products from LANDFIRE for the Wassuk Range in western Nevada, USA. While Biophysical Settings between the two sources matched approximately half of the time, only 2.5 % of the area matched both FRCC and BpS simultaneously. LFNA products were designed for national, regional, or very large landscape applications, it. Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC), a measure of vegetation departure from a reference condition (Hann et al 2004), and Biophysical Setting (BpS), which depicts pre-European settlement vegetation pattern, could be of tremendous interest. This study compared locally derived Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) and Biophysical Setting (BpS) with corresponding LFNA products on a projectsized landscape, Wassuk Range, Nevada, USA
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