NPS Photo
Overview
At the junction of the eastern hardwood forest, southern pine forest and Great Plains biomes, the Ozark National Scenic Riverways has a diverse plant population. Prickly pear cactus and paw paw trees grow nearly side by side in forests dominated by white oaks. Some species are relicts from the last Ice Age, holding on in cooler pockets around cave mouths while their nearest relatives are hundreds of miles to the north. Others are desert species, left behind on dry rocky glades by similar climate changes. In the springtime, the forest floor blooms with the many "spring ephemerals", the trilliums, bloodroot, trout lilly, jack in the pulpit and others who live out their life during the short interval between the onset of warm weather and the growth of tree leaves that cut off the forest floor from much needed sunshine. In summer, the open areas and roadsides are blooming with pale purple coneflower, butterfly weed, and an array of asters, daisies, wild carrot and others.The Ozark National Scenic Riverways Vegetation Inventory Project delivers many geospatial and vegetation data products, including an in-depth project report discussing methods and results, which include descriptions to vegetation associations, field keys to vegetation associations, map classification, and map-class descriptions. The suite of products also includes a database of vegetation plots, and accuracy assessment (AA) sites; digital images of field sites; digital aerial imagery; digital maps; a contingency table listing AA results; and a geodatabase of vegetation, field sites (vegetation plots, and AA sites), aerial imagery, project boundary, and metadata.
Products
The products of vegetation mapping projects are stored and managed in the National Park Service's Data Store, a repository for documents and publications relating to park resources. From the highlighted items below, click on the type of information you are looking for.
Last updated: October 18, 2018