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Central Mojave Desert Vegetation Mapping Project, California, 1997-1999

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2022-09-23T00:00:00Z
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Data at Risk (DaR) team partnered with the USGS Southwest Biological Science Center (SBSC) to preserve and release tabular data, shapefiles and field photographs of the Central Mojave Desert from 1997-1999. The data were originally collected as part of an effort through the Desert Managers Group (DMG) to develop scientific information on the distribution and characteristics of vegetation in the eastern Mojave Desert of California. This data preservation effort recovers information from obsolete geospatial files, database files, and field photographs and releases it all in open-source formats. The data made available in this release provide historic context on the species composition and distributions of various plant communities in the Central Mojave Desert which can be used to contextualize changes in vegetation composition of the Mojave Desert ecosystem. Aside from this project level summary, the pieces of this data release are as follows: -A Field Data ScienceBase item including a metadata record (Mojave-Vegetation-Mapping_Field-Data-Metadata.xml) and tabular field data (5 CSV files, Field_Data.zip) -A Plots Points and Photographs ScienceBase item including a metadata record (Mojave-Vegetation-Mapping_Plots-Points-and-Photographs-Metadata.xml), a plots points locations shapefile (zipped shapefile, plots_points.zip), photographs (12 zip folders of TIFF files, Mojave_Images_Plots-##-##.zip) and a crosswalk resource to relate the images to plots points (Mojave_Images_Crosswalk.csv) -A Special Features ScienceBase item including a metadata record (Mojave-Vegetation-Mapping_Spec-Feat-Points-Metadata.xml) and a special features points shapefile (zipped shapefile, spec_feat_points.zip) -A Mojave Vegetation Polygons ScienceBase item including a metadata record (Mojave-Vegetation-Mapping_Mojave-Veg-Polygons-Metadata.xml), a Mojave vegetation polygons shapefile (zipped shapefile, mojave_veg_polygons.zip) and a label codes sheet that provides context for the vegetation classifications (LabelCodes.csv)

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