The United States National Vegetation Classification: Creating A Common Language To Classify The Nation’s Vegetation

Abstract

In every introductory biology class, students learn the classification system used to catalogue plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms. In order of increasing specificity, the major levels of classification are: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Global adoption of this system allows us to create an inventory of the world’s species diversity. For instance, we classify the Redwood tree of the US Pacific coast as the species sempervirens in the genus Sequoia, or Sequoia sempervirens. Until recently, however, there was no comparable standard available in the United States to classify the nation’s diverse types of vegetation – the various combinations of species, growth forms, and ecological factors that occur in certain regions. Instead, many land-management groups created their own classifications, hindering communication and collaboration. To address this issue, stakeholders established the United States National Vegetation Classification (USNVC).