Draft Standard Monitoring Protocols for Herbaceous Vegetation

Abstract

Many methods have been developed over the last century for measuring the characteristics or attributes of plant communities, however, there are no widely accepted standard methods for monitoring vegetation, especially for ecosystem restoration projects. This report presents the draft standard herbaceous vegetation monitoring protocols developed for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for use in their Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration projects. The objectives of the protocols are the following: (1) to be able to detect changes in species composition and abundance between years at the same site, (2) to be comparable between sites, (3) to be effective in multiple habitat types, with an herbaceous vegetation layer, and regions of the continental United States, (4) to minimize personal or sampling biases, and (5) to be able to use data for the calculation of appropriate success metrics (e.g., diversity, condition, etc.). The protocols will be tested in the field at multiple restoration sites throughout the U.S. Final protocols will be refined or modified based on results of testing and will be made available to the public.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2019
Accession Number
AD1075121

Entities

People

  • Brook D. Herman

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Army
  • Army Corps Of Engineers
  • Botany
  • Classification
  • Communities
  • Ecology
  • Ecosystems
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Environment
  • Geological Surveys
  • Habitats
  • Monitoring
  • New York
  • North America
  • Plants
  • Sampling
  • Standards
  • Test And Evaluation
  • United States
  • Vegetation

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Wetland-Land-Environmental Management.