Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program 20080630 vector digital data http://www1.usgs.gov/vip/upde/updeaa.zip Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program 200812 technical report http://www.usgs.gov/core_science_systems/csas/vip/parks/upde.html doi:10.5066/F73R0QV1 Location of thematic accuracy assessment sampling points used in the vegetation classification and mapping of Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River . To identify the locations of sampling points used to assess the thematic accuracy of the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River vegetation association map. 20080630 20080630 Complete None planned Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River and environs -75.285371 -74.737367 41.939215 41.407285 none thematic accuracy assessment vegetation community classifcation vegetation association map National Park Service none Pennsylvania Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River None Standardized National Vegetation Classification System vegetation classification alliance community association Kingdom Plantae none none Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program mailing and physical address

208 Airport Drive

Middletown Pennsylvania 17055 USA (717) 948-3962 (717) 948-3957 http://www1.usgs.gov/vip/upde/updeaa.pdf Locations of thematic accuracy assessment sites; low resolution for web browsing. PDF Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy Microsoft Windows XP Version 5.1 (Build 2600) Service Pack 3; ESRI ArcCatalog 9.2.6.1500 ESRI point geometry. Each accuracy assessment point is represented by one point in the shapefile. All points fall within vegetation association polygons. Two points (120 and 269) fall just outside the boundary. This is due to the boundary polygon change and/or access to land during the project. The number and distribution of sampling points was determined according to the USGS/NPS Vegetation Mapping protocols. A stratified random sampling approach was used, distributing the sampling effort across the 16 vegetation associations. Polygons labeled with modified Anderson level II categories were not included in the thematic accuracy assessment sampling. The polygons labeled as mosaics were grouped with the association that was the least abundant between the two associations in the mosaic. The number of samples per association varied according to the rarity of the vegetation type, both in terms of number of polygons and polygon size. The following rules were used to determine the number of points assigned to each association: Scenario A: The class is abundant. It covers more than 50 hectares of the total area and consists of at least 30 polygons. In this case, it is recommended that 30 polygons be selected at random from the set of association's polygons. One sampling point will be assigned to each of the 30 selected polygons. Scenario B: The association is relatively abundant. It covers more than 50 hectares of the total area but consists of fewer than 30 polygons. In this case, it is recommended that 20 polygons be selected at random from the set of association's polygons, and that 1 sampling point be assigned to each of the 20 selected polygons. If the association contains less than 20 polygons, some polygons will contain multiple sampling points. The number of sampling points assigned to each polygon is determined by the relative area of that polygon compared with the other polygon in that association. Scenario C: The association is relatively rare. It covers less than 50 hectares of the total area but consists of more than 30 polygons. In this case, it is recommended that 20 polygons be selected at random from the set of association's polygons. One sampling point will be assigned to each of the 20 selected polygons. Scenario D: The class is rare. It has 5 - 30 polygons and covers less than 50 hectares of the area. In this case, it is recommended that 5 polygons be selected at random from the set of association's polygons. One sampling point will be assigned to each of the 5 selected polygons. Scenario E: The association is very rare. It has fewer than 5 polygons and occupies less than 50 hectares of the total area. In this case, it is recommended that one sampling point be assigned to each polygon. Scenarios B, C, D, and E were used in the sampling design. Scenario A was not used for this sampling design because no association met the criteria of that scenario. The number of sampling points for Northern Red Oak - Northern Hardwood Forest was doubled from that recommended by the protocol in order to better assess the accuracy of that type. In order to randomly select the polygons in Scenarios B, C, and D, the Create Random Selection tool in Hawth's Analysis Tools was used in ArcGIS. For all of the scenarios, the Generate Random Points tool in Hawth's Analysis Tools was used to randomly determine the location of the sampling points in the polygons. The total number of thematic accuracy assessment sampling points assigned through this procedure was 539. In June 2006, each accuracy assessment point was located in the field using a Trimble GeoXM global positioning system (GPS) unit, with the datum set to North American 1983 (Conus) and the coordinate system set to Universal Trans-Mercator (UTM) zone 18. 20080630 The aa shapefile was altered to create a shapefile suitable for public distribution. The X, Y coordinates for each plot that contains a rare plant species that could be vulnerable to collection were relocated to the following centrally located position: UTM East 495910 UTM North 4611915. Coordinates were altered in this manner for three plots. As a result, it is possible that some or all of the points now fall outside a vegetation polygon. A field named "crd_alt" was added to the shapefile attribute table; the value for this field is"yes" if the plot coordinates were altered. 20090416 Kristina Callahan National Park Service Data Manager mailing and physical address

422 Forest Resources Bldg.

University Park PA 16802 USA 814-863-2320 Vector Entity point 547 Universal Transverse Mercator 18 0.999600 -75.000000 0.000000 500000.000000 0.000000 coordinate pair 0.000001 0.000001 meters North American Datum of 1983 Geodetic Reference System 80 6378137.000000 298.257222 UPDE_veg_aa_2005_pub Shapefile attribute table Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program FID Internal feature number. ESRI Sequential unique whole numbers that are automatically generated. Shape Feature geometry. ESRI Coordinates defining the features. UTM_X X Coordinate NPS Coordinates defining the features. UTM_Y Y Coordinate NPS Coordinates defining the features. AAObsCode Unique code for point NPS Unique code for each point. crd_alt Coordinates altered NPS Yes Coordinates for this feature were altered to protect rare plant species NPS USGS/CSS/Core Science Analytics and Synthesis USGS-NPS Vegetation Characterization Program Coordinator mailing and physical address

Denver Federal Center, Building 810, MS 302

Denver Colorado 80225 (303) 202-4220 303-202-4219 gs-b-npsveg@usgs.gov Downloadable Data The U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service shall not be held liable for improper or incorrect use of the data described and/or contained herein. These data and related graphics (if available) are not legal documents and are not intended to be used as such. The information contained in these data is dynamic and may change over time. The data are not better than the original sources from which they were derived. It is the responsibility of the data user to use the data appropriately and consistent within the limitations of geospatial data in general and these data in particular. Any related graphics (if available) are intended to aid the data user in acquiring relevant data; it is not approriate to use the related graphics as data. The U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of these data. It is strongly recommended that these data are directly acquired from an U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service servers and not indirectly through other sources which may have changed the data in some way. Although these data have been processed successfully on a computer system at the U.S. Geological Survey, no warranty expressed or implied is made regarding the utility of the data on another system or for general or scientific purposes, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty. This disclaimer applies both to individual use of the data and aggregate use with other data. It is also strongly recommended that careful attention be paid to the contents of the metadata file associated with these data. Mention of trade names or commercial products in this metadata report does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use by the U. S. Department of the Interior, U. S. Geological Survey and National Park Service. HTML http://www.usgs.gov/core_science_systems/csas/vip/parks/upde.html Internet Access None 20090416 20100616 USGS/CSS/Core Science Analytics and Synthesis USGS-NPS Vegetation Characterization Program Coordinator mailing and physical address

Denver Federal Center, Building 810, MS 302

Denver Colorado 80225 (303) 202-4220 303-202-4219 gs-b-npsveg@usgs.gov FGDC Biological Data Profile of the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata FGDC-STD-001.1-1999 http://www.usgs.gov/core_science_systems/csas/metadata/index.html