New York Natural Heritage Program 20080630 vector digital data http://www1.usgs.gov/vip/upde/updeplot.zip doi:10.5066/F7V69GK8 Location of vegetation sampling plots used to collect data for vegetation classification and mapping at Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River. To identify locations of plots from which data was collected to use in the classification and mapping efforts at Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River. 20050607 20050922 ground condition Complete None planned Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River and environs -75.285166 -74.736990 41.894187 41.410547 none plot vegetation community classification vegetation association map National Park Service none Pennsylvania New York Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River None Standardized National Vegetation Classification System vegetation classification alliance community association Kingdom Plantae none none New York Natural Heritage Program mailing and physical address

208 Airport Drive

Middletown Pennsylvania 17055 USA (518) 402-8946 (518) 402-8725 http://www1.usgs.gov/vip/upde/updeplots.pdf Locations of vegetation plots; 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 plot is represented by one point. All points fall within the mapped polygons. One point (101) falls just outside the boundary. This is due to the boundary polygon change and/or access to land during the project. All vegetation plot sampling followed the USGS/NPS Vegetation Mapping Program protocols (The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Systems Research Institute 1994b). The Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River is considered a large park (222 km2, 86 mi2) for which the gradient directed transect sampling (gradsect) approach should be used. The gradsect approach is a variant of a stratified random sampling strategy that intends to efficiently describe the full range of vegetation by sampling along the full range of environmental variability (Gillison and Brewer 1985, Austin and Adomeit 1991). Gradsects are areas of the park selected for sampling that contain the strongest environmental gradients and that are reasonably accessible. This strategy optimizes the amount of data collected relative to the time and effort spent during vegetation sampling. The total area of the gradsects should include at least 15% of the park area (The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Systems Research Institute 1994b). In order to select gradsect areas, several environmental gradients and factors were examined, including elevation, slope, aspect, and geology. Due to the orientation of the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River around the river itself, these factors form strong environmental gradients from the river to the ridgetops in both Pennsylvania and New York. However, the vast majority of the land in the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River is held in private ownership. Hence, the sampling strategy will also be driven by the accessibility of the land within the gradsects. Thirty-seven potential gradsects stretching from rivershore to the park boundary were identified. Twenty of these gradsects were located around parcels that are owned by public entities (i.e. Pennyslvania Game Commission, New York Department of Environmental Conservation, etc), private conservation organizations, or landowners of large parcels who were likely to provide access to their lands. The remaining 17 gradsects were located along the length of the park and on both sides of the river in order to capture environmental gradients between the southern and northern ends of the park, as well as the eastern and western sides of the river. These gradsects captured variation in vegetation cover type, aerial photograph signature, elevation, topography, aspect, and geology. The large number of gradsects provided redundancy in case certain gradsects were eliminated due to access constraints. These gradsects encompassed 8,052 ha (19,888 ac) in total, covering 36% of the park area. With the vegetation cover type map and the gradsects as guides, ecologists from the New York Natural Heritage Program worked with the resource managers and park staff at the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River to gain access to lands within the park for vegetation sampling. Park service personnel issued a press release to inform the public of the vegetation mapping and classification study. They then contacted landowners with lands located in the gradsects by mail and phone to ask permission to access their lands. By the end of the field season, access had been granted for sampling in17 of the gradsects, with a total area of 3,018 ha (7,454 ac). In addition to the gradsect sampling, vegetation cover types not adequately sampled by the gradsect method were targeted. Temporarily flooded and semipermanently flooded vegetation cover types on Delaware River islands and shoreline were accessed by canoe and sampled on two days in September, 2005. 20080630 New York Natural Heritage Program mailing and physical address

208 Airport Drive

Middletown PA 17055 USA (518) 402-8946 (518) 402-8725 The vegetation plots 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 four 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 16801 814-863-2320 Vector Entity point 228 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_plots_2005_pub Shapefile attribute table New York Natural Heritage Program FID Internal feature number. ESRI Sequential unique whole numbers that are automatically generated. Shape Feature geometry. ESRI Coordinates defining the features. PLOT_CODE NPS four letter park code plus unique number NPS Unique code for each feature. crd_alt Coordinates altered NPS Yes The coordinates with yes in this column have been 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