Long-Term Planning for Vegetation Management

Skill 2: Using Vegetation Series

Contents

Learning Objectives

[6b] describe the information, capabilities and resources needed to complete a long-term management plan regarding vegetation types.

Narrative

The California Native Plant Society has identified a large number of California vegetation types, including common and rare plant assemblages and habitats, in the book A Manual of California Vegetation. An interactive database of the classification is available online: Online Manual of California Vegetation (CNPS).
The information in the Manual of Vegetation may be used in (at least) two ways in vegetation management.
  1. If the existing vegetation type is a good fit with the land management goals, then the list of associated species can be used to determine plants that might be introduced to supplement the dominant species.
  2. In some cases, the existing vegetation type is not a good fit with the land management goals; for example, the Introduced perennial grassland series is not a good fit with native plant restoration. In this case, the abiotic characteristics of the site (i.e. wetland/upland, soil, topography) can be used, together with the type of historical and nearby vegetation, to identify a replacement vegetation type.
A vegetation series is identified by the dominant species in the layer having the greatest cover, which may be herbaceous (e.g. California oatgrass series), shrub (e.g. Chamise series) or tree (e.g. Bishop pine series). While height is often a distinguising feature among these three groups, it is not the only factor to consider. Herbaceous plants are non-woody, independent of how tall they are. For example, giant reed (Arundo donax) and pampas grass (Cortaderia sp.) are considered herbaceous plants even though they can grow to the height of a small tree. Trees are distinguished from shrubs by the presence of a main trunk. Some species, such as interior live oak, can occur in shrub or tree form. Dominance is a subjective characteristic, but essentially means that there is much more of the dominant species than any other single species.
Some plant communities don't have a single dominant species. Many of these series are labelled by two species (e.g. Dougls fir-tan oak series) or a group of species (e.g. Mixed oak series). Most vegetation types are characteristically wetland or upland- this can be used to narrow down the types to consider. The Manual also classifies certain vegetation according to abiotic (non-living) factors, such as vernal pools and fens.
Bear in mind that the Vegetation Manual is not perfect- some series may appear in geographies that are not listed, some plant communities may not exactly fit an existing series. Vegetation changes over time, through natural and artificial processes. Grasslands may contain emergent trees or shrubs; as these mature, the vegetation type may shift to a shrub or tree series. A highly disturbed site may contain a very different set of species than that prior to disturbance.
The existing or replacement vegetation type specified in the long-term management plan guides the selection of revegetation species.

Supplemental Documents

Mendocino County Vegetation Types
http://www.imcwma.org/pages_html/learn/LTMP/MendoVegSeries/

Exercises

  1. Open the supplemental spreadsheet- this contains information about the vegetation types that may occur in the California North Coast Region. Click on the links in the first column to open the type description webpages. Select all the data records and sort by the various columns.
  2. Select vegetation type. Use the spreadsheet to determine the associated species.
  3. Suppose you are revegetating a degraded pasture. It is an upland site with moderately drained soils and flat topography. The soil has heavy clay content and is not ultra-mafic. Use the spreadsheet to find at least one native vegetation type that fits these abiotic characteristics.

References

 
The content of the page was last modified 2007-09-13