Chapter 7 - Mapping potential vegetation type for the LANDFIRE Prototype Project

Abstract

Mapped potential vegetation functioned as a key component in the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Prototype Project (LANDFIRE Prototype Project). Disturbance regimes, vegetation response and succession, and wildland fuel dynamics across landscapes are controlled by patterns of the environmental factors (biophysical settings) that entrain the physiology and distribution of vegetation. These biophysical characteristics of landscapes are linked to stable vegetation communities that occur in the absence of disturbance (Arno and others 1985; Cooper and others 1991; Ferguson 1989; Pfister and Arno 1980; Pfister and others 1977). In the LANDFIRE Prototype Project, these stable vegetation community types were referred to as potential vegetation types (PVTs). Further, the concept of potential vegetation was used as a basis for developing biophysical map units that were critical for developing the LANDFIRE wildland fuel and fire regime products. In the LANDFIRE Prototype Project, maps of potential vegetation facilitated linkage of the ecological process of succession to simulation landscapes used as input the LANDSUMv4 landscape fire succession model for modeling historical vegetation reference conditions and historical fire regimes (Long and others, Ch. 9). In addition, maps of PVT were used to guide the parameterization and calibration of the landscape fire succession model LANDSUMv4 (Pratt and others, Ch. 10) and to stratify vegetation communities for mapping current vegetation and wildland fuel mapping (Zhu and others, Ch, 8; Keane and others, Ch. 12).

Parent Publication

• The LANDFIRE Prototype Project: nationally consistent and locally relevant geospatial data for wildland fire management

Citation

Frescino, Tracey S.; Rollins, Matthew G. 2006. Chapter 7 - Mapping potential vegetation type for the LANDFIRE Prototype Project. In: Rollins, Matthew G.; Frame, Christine K., tech. eds. 2006. The LANDFIRE Prototype Project: nationally consistent and locally relevant geospatial data for wildland fire management Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-175. Fort Collins: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 181-196