The Vegetation Plot Archive Project

Design and Development Process

• Abstract and overview

• Information flow in vegetation classification

• The development process

• Meetings

• Participants

• The Original NSF proposal

Abstract and overview

Vegetation classification is of central importance to biological conservation for planning and inventory, to resource management for monitoring and planning, and to basic scientific research as a tool for organizing and interpreting ecological information. All of these activities require that ecological units be defined and that their distributions on the landscape be known and understood. Vegetation classification contributes significantly to analysis of ecological problems that vary in scale from persistence of tiny populations of endangered species to global projections of the impact of climate change. Technological advances have made practical large-scale analyses that cross agency jurisdictions or geographic regions and address applied ecological issues as diverse as global change, ecosystem management, and conservation planning. However, all such efforts depend on having available a common set of well defined and broadly accepted classification units.

Through the combined efforts of NatureServe (formerly called The Association of Biodiversity Information or ABI^*), the Ecological Society of America Vegetation Panel (ESA-VP), and the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), the United States is on the verge of having its first fully functional, widely-applied vegetation classification system. The federal government has declared the need for a single standard, and on October 22, 1997, the Secretary of Interior, acting as Chair of the Federal Geographic Data Committee, approved the Vegetation Information and Classification Standard, which is now the standard vegetation classification for U.S. federal agencies and their cooperators. Yet, there are still major obstacles to overcome to make such a system operational and broadly accepted. ESA-VP is working in close collaboration with NatureServe and FGDC to draft standards for field data acquisition, type definition, and peer review of proposed additions and changes. The current draft standards are available for public comment. A core component is an information infrastructure to manage the anticipated 10⁷ plots and 10⁴ plant associations required for a national system, and to distribute this information across the web in a continually revised but perfectly archived format. The major goal of this NCEAS-based project is to create a working prototype of the requisite information system for potential adoption by federal agencies and partner organizations.

^*We are using the new name "NatureServe" for all references to "ABI," even for references which predate the name change. This allows for consistency in referencing one organization.

Information flow in vegetation classification

To understand the functions of the required information infrastructure for vegetation science, it is necessary to understand the flow of information through the system.

• Vegetation scientists observe and record vegetation in the field. The fundamental unit of vegetation observation is the plot. At a minimum, a plot contains information on location, spatial extent, and the species present with cover values as a measure of importance. A Vegetation Plots Database is needed to store, preserve and distribute plot data that meet recognized minimum standards.
• Plots are used to classify vegetation. Eventually, each vegetation type will be documented in a Vegetation Classification Database, which will refer to the plots used to develop the types. Proposals to change the classification will be required to be based on plots. All of these plots will be referenced in the Vegetation Classification Database and will be available from the Vegetation Plots Database.
• The resultant Vegetation Classification Database will be viewable over the web, will be continuously updated, and will be constructed so that the content on any given date will be viewable so as to allow citation in literature and legal contracts.
• All stages in this information flow contain references to plant names, but use of different standards for different plots weakens our ability to compare and synthesize plot data. A concept-based Taxon Database (embedding some of the principles espoused in Berendsohn 1995) is needed to avoid these problems.

This database system consists of prototypes of the three core components of the information infrastructure necessary to support the U.S. National Vegetation Classification (US-NVC). The first component is a Vegetation Plots Database with internet access tools. A Windows based desktop version for private/institutional use is available for data preparation and submission. The second component is a concept-based Taxon Database compliant with anticipated FGDC, ITIS, and IOPI standards and populated with data drawn from the ITIS database. The third component is a concept-based Vegetation Classification Database compliant with anticipated FGDC standards and populated with data from NatureServe. The databases have been designed so as to allow continual revision while simultaneously being perfectly archived so as to allow citation in literature and legal documents.

The development process

We have engaged in a four-stage process for database development. The first stage (July 1999-June 2000) largely consisted of a period of scoping and organizing. This included a major meeting held at NCEAS in October 1999 for the purpose introducing the major participants to the project's background and goals, and for refining the major objectives of the project, the lists of participants, the budget, and the schedule. The kickoff meeting was followed by a search for a staff programmer, which successfully concluded with John Harris starting employment at NCEAS in early July 2000.

The second stage of the project (July 2000-January 2001) focused on design and construction of the core plots database. Toward this end back-to-back meetings were held at NCEAS in September 2000. The first, attended primarily by active field ecologists, focused on refinement of the database requirements first articulated in Chapter 3 of the Vegetation Panel draft standards document. The second meeting was attended primarily by data modelers and overlapped the first meeting for a day, thereby facilitating communication between the two groups. The plots data model, initially developed in September and subsequently revised through an iterative process involving various participants from the September meetings, is summarized in section 6 of this document.

Simultaneous with stage two, we conducted a parallel design study for a concept-based taxonomic database. Although it is not our plan for the NCEAS working group to fully develop and implement a national taxonomic database, we consider creation of such a database essential for our planned vegetation information infrastructure, and especially for the process of incorporating legacy plot data collected at different times by different parties using different taxonomic standards. Accordingly, we are collaborating with partner organizations, aiding in the design and implementation of this key database. Toward this end potential database architecture was discussed at the September NCEAS meetings, and Steve Taswell and Robert Peet subsequently collaborated to design a data architecture for possible implementation by both NatureServe and ITIS. Peet and Taswell then joined Janet Gomon (representing ITIS and the FGDC subcommittee on Biological Nomenclature) to host a meeting at the Smithsonian (November 2000) to review the Taswell-Peet model as a candidate for adoption by ITIS and FDGC as a federal standard. (The summary of findings from the November 2000 meeting is available at the FGDC Biological Data Working Group website.) The Working group is continuing to collaborate with the FGDC Biological Data Working Group to develop draft national standards for taxonomic databases. We will include a prototype national plants database employing the proposed FGDC standard as a module of the plot database. NatureServe is also drawing on this modeling effort to build a nation-wide, concept-based database for organisms as a component of their new HDMS database system (Heritage Data Management System).

Stage three (February - October 2001) has focused on design and development of the database and associated interface tools (including the internet-based toolbox and the desk-top resident tools) for both loading data into and retrieving data from the Vegetation Plots Database. Preliminary interface requirements were developed at the January 2001 meeting and were finalized at the October 2001 meeting.

The fourth stage of the project (October 2001 - June 2002) consists of testing and refinement of the database and iterative development of tools for data preparation, data loading, database querying, and manipulation/analysis of extracted data.

Working Group Meetings

• April 7, 1999. NatureServe, Washington DC. Project definition.
• May 1, 1999. NatureServe, Washington DC. Data model design.
• October 12, 1999. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group kick-off meeting. [Agenda]
• July 26, 2000. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Orientation for John Harris
• September 11, 2000. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group - user needs assessment. [Agenda]
• September 13, 2000. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group - data model development. [Agenda]
• October 12, 2000. NatureServe, Washington DC. Data model design for plant taxonomy module.
• November 2, 2000. Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Working Group - plant taxonomy [Agenda]
• January 29, 2001. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group - user interface design [Agenda]
• April 26, 2001. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Implementation planning. [Agenda]
• July 25, 2001. Smithsonian Institution and FGDC, Washington DC. Plant taxonomy model development.
• October 24, 2001. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group - model finalization and interface development. [Agenda]
• February 4, 2002. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group - Interface development and strategic planning. [Agenda]
• June 3, 2002. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group - Developers meeting.
• August 3, 2002. ESA, Tucson, AZ. Vegetation Classification Workshop. [Agenda] [Workshop Site]
• September 11, 2002. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Primary Investigator Meeting - Planning for second grant.
• September 12, 2002. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group - Collaboration with and feedback from international groups. [Agenda] [Report]
• January 22, 2003. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group - Planning for initial release.
• August 11, 2003. NatureServe, Arlington VA. Working Group - Connectivity between VegBank and NatureServe databases.
• September 29, 2003. NCEAS, Santa Barbara CA. Working Group - Planning for Future Workshops, Workbench Concept Engine. [Concept Engine]
• November 3-4, 2003. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. VegBank Workshop for NatureServe Staff.
  [Agenda] [Why VegBank? pdf | ppt (IE)] [VegBank Data Model pdf | ppt (IE)] [VegBank-NVC pdf | ppt (IE)]
• January 23-24, 2004. NCEAS, Santa Barbara, CA. SEEK-VegBank Discussion and Correlation of Taxonomic Models.
• March 8-10, 2004. NatureServe, Arlington, VA. NatureServe-VegBank evaluation and planning. Taxonomic component, data transfer, VegBranch and VegBank planning and reports.
• June 14-16, 2004. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. Working Group - VegBank Evaluation, Feature Revision, and Workshop planning.

Additionally, workshops have taken place to educate users about VegBank. Information about these can be found on our Professional Training Page.

Participants

Project Leadership

• Robert K. Peet, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Dennis Grossman, NatureServe
• Michael Jennings, USGS Gap Analysis Program, Univ. California Santa Barbara
• Marilyn D. Walker, USDA Forest Service, University of Alaska
• P. Mark Anderson, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
• Michael Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Meeting participants