The Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve Vegetation Mapping Project: Geodatabase—Southwest Coastal Everglades (Region 3), Everglades National Park

The Everglades National Park (EVER) and Big Cypress National Preserve (BICY) vegetation mapping project is part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). It is a cooperative effort between the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and the National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Mapping Inventory Program (VMI). The goal of this project is to produce a spatially and thematically accurate vegetation map of Everglades NP and Big Cypress NP prior to the completion of restoration efforts. The vegetation map will serve as a record of baseline conditions to: (1) document changes to the spatial extent, pattern, and proportion of plant communities within these two federally-managed units as they respond to hydrologic modifications resulting from the implementation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan and the Western Everglades Restoration Project; and (2) provide vegetation and land-cover information to NPS park managers and scientists for use in park management, resource management, research, and monitoring. This project covers an area of approximately 7,400 square kilometers (1.84 million acres [ac]) and consists of seven mapping regions: four regions in Everglades NP, Regions 1–4, and three in Big Cypress NP, Regions 5–7 (Figure 1). The report that follows focuses on the mapping effort associated with Region 3, the Southwest Coastal Everglades (SWCE); an area geographically centered around Whitewater Bay in Everglades NP. Region 3 encompasses a total area of 990.7 square kilometers (382.5 square miles, 244,816 ac) and is bounded by Shark River Slough/Long Pine Key (Region 1) to the northeast, Taylor Slough (Region 2) to the east, and the Northwest Coastal Everglades (Region 4) to the north. Photo-interpretation was performed by superimposing a 50 × 50 meter (164 × 164 feet or 0.25 hectare [0.61 ac]) grid cell vector matrix over stereoscopic, 0.30 centimeter (11.8 inches) spatial resolution, color-infrared aerial imagery on a digital photogrammetric workstation. Photo-interpreters identified the dominant community in each cell by applying majority-rule algorithms, recognizing community-specific spectral signatures alongside an aerial photograph interpretation key, and referencing an extensive ground-truth database. The dominant vegetation community within in each grid cell was classified using a hierarchical classification system developed specifically for this project. Photo-interpreters additionally noted any evidence of disturbance in each grid cell as either anthropogenic, fire, freeze, or windstorm and categorized the absolute cover of cattail (Typha sp.) and any exotic species present as either: Sparse (10–49%), Dominant (50–89%), or Monotypic (90–100%). A total of 169 thematic classes were used to map Region 3. The most common vegetation class was Mixed Mangrove Forest. This community accounted for approximately 8% of the area mapped. Other notable classes include Short Sawgrass Marsh-Dense (6.1%), Red Mangrove Forest (5.0%), Black Mangrove-Red Mangrove Forest (4.5%), and Red Mangrove Scrub-Open Marsh (4.5%). These five classes plus water, e.g., ponds, lakes, bays, rivers, etc., (26%) account for approximately 54% of the entire area mapped within Region 3. Based on 245 randomly selected points, the accuracy of the Region 3 map was determined to be 89.4% with a lower 90th percentile confidence level of 85.6%.

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