Vegetation Modeling, Analysis and Visualization in U.s. National Parks

Researchers at the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science (CRMS) at The University of Georgia have worked with the U.S. Department of Interior National Park Service (NPS) over the past decade to create detailed vegetation databases for several National Parks and Historic Sites in the southeastern United States. The sizes of the parks under investigation vary from Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve in south Florida (10,000 km) and Great Smoky Mountains National Park located in the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina (2,000 km) to small national battlefields and historic sites of less than 100 ha. Detailed vegetation mapping in the parks/historic sites has required the combined use of Global Positioning System (GPS), softcopy photogrammetry and geographic information system (GIS) procedures with digital elevation models (DEMs) to construct large scale digital orthophotos and vector-based vegetation databases. Upon completion of the vegetation databases, 3D visualization and spatial analyses were conducted and rule-based models constructed to assist park managers with a variety of environmental issues such as terrain influence on vegetation, fire fuel assessment and vegetation patterns related to interpreter differences and human influence on vegetation.