Vegetation history classification for Watersheds 1, 2, and 3, Andrews Experimental Forest, 1959-1990

The objective of this study was to create GIS layers depicting vegetation cover over the history of the small experimental watersheds (WS 1, 2, and 3) based on aerial photography from the 1950s to 1990, for landscape ecology and spatial modeling studies. Aerial photos were interpreted for hydrologically relevant vegetation types (conifer, broadleaf, grasses and bare soil) cover classes, and forest age class was determined for each year (1959, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1979, and 1990). Vegetation data for functional groups (conifer, evergreen broadleaf, deciduous broadleaf) was aggregated from species data available in TP073 for the long term vegetation plots in Watershed 1.