Robert K. Peet
Univ. North Carolina at Chapel Hill
In collaboration with
Thomas Wentworth (NCSU), Alan Weakley (NCBG),
Mike Schafale (NC Heritage Program)

Multi-institutional collaborative study to document and understand the natural vegetation of the Carolinas.
High-quality, quantitative records of natural vegetation

• Description, classification, and analysis of the natural vegetation of the Carolinas
• Determine attributes of individual taxa
• Inventory
• Targets for restoration
• Long-term monitoring – both natural and modified lands
• It’s fun

Data collection and analysis - an on-going activity

• Consistent methodology
• Appropriate for most vegetation types
• FGDC compliant
• Scale transgressive
• Flexible in intensity of use and commitment of time (Levels 1-5)
• Easily resampleable
• Total floristics
• Tree population structure
• Major site variables, including soil attributes

Plots contain multiple modules recorded at multiple scales

• Based on community collaboration
• Provides training & experience
• Intense regional focus for one week
– “Bootcamp for botanists”
– “Botanical Woodstock”
– “Extreme botany”

• Pulses events: 19 years (1-2/yr)
• Numerous affiliated projects
• Volunteer participants: > 600
• Total plots: > 6000
• Total species: > 3000
• Total vegetation types: > 200

2628 of 4073 species, 4956 plots, 194331 occurrences
8
9
6
7
10
11
12
Octave
0
1
2
3
4
5
Range
0
1
2-3
4-7
8-15
16-31
32-63
64-127
128-255
256-511
512-1023
1024-2047
>2047
280
268
189
95
53
25
1
Count
1445
354
350
342
342
328

• 63% Acer rubrum (Red Maple)
• 39% Smilax glauca (Whiteleaf Greenbrier)
• 38% Smilax rotundifolia (Common Greenbrier)
• 36%
• 36%
Nyssa sylvatica (Black Gum)
Quercus rubra (Red Oak)

Top 7 species:
652 Coastal Plain forest plots
• 48% Toxicodendron radicans (Poison-ivy)
• 44% Acer rubrum (Red Maple)
• 44% Parthenocissus quinquefolia
(Virginia-creeper)
• 41% Vitis rotundifolia (Muscadine)
• 41% Liquidambar styraciflua (Sweetgum)
• 35% Smilax rotundifolia
(Common Greenbrier)
• 34% Smilax bona-nox (Catbrier)
(15 of the top 50 are vines)

• Rare species
• Weeds of fields and waste places
• Plants of marshes and wetlands
• Plants of special habitats

Occurrences of Carolina Milkweeds
**=rare, *=uncommon (Weakley 2006)
31 Asclepias amplexicaulis
9 ** Asclepias cinerea
1 ** Asclepias connivens
58
18
Asclepias exaltata
Asclepias humistrata
4 Asclepias incarnata
3 * Asclepias lanceolata
27 * Asclepias longifolia
13 * Asclepias michauxii
1 ** Asclepias obovata
9 ** Asclepias pedicellata
1 ** Asclepias perennis
0 ** Asclepias purpurascens
13 Asclepias quadrifolia
3 * Asclepias rubra
0 Asclepias syriaca
6 * Asclepias tomentosa
28 Asclepias tuberosa
14 Asclepias variegata
24 * Asclepias verticillata
2 * Asclepias viridiflora
0 ** Asclepias viridis

9 Types
13 Types
Xeric barrens &
Subxeric uplands:
Longleaf – turkey oak woodlands on entisols

5 types
Flatwoods:
Longleaf woodlands of spodosols

12 types
Silty uplands:
Longleaf woodlands on well-drained ultisols

13 types
Savannas and seeps:
Longleaf woodlands on moist alfisols

Mountain Vegetation
•
Montane upland forests
• Montane open upland vegetation
•
Montane alluvial wetland vegetation
• Montane nonalluvial wetland vegetation
Piedmont Vegetation
•
Piedmont upland forests
• Piedmont open upland vegetation
•
Piedmont alluvial wetland vegetation
• Piedmont nonalluvial wetland vegetation
Coastal Plain Vegetation
•
Coastal Plain upland forests
• Coastal Plain upland open & woodland vegetation
•
Coastal Plain alluvial wetland vegetation
• Coastal Plain nonalluvial wetland vegetation
Coastal Fringe Vegetation
•
Maritime upland forests & shrublands
• Maritime open upland vegetation
•
Maritime nontidal wetland vegetation
• Tidal wetland vegetation http://cvs.bio.unc.edu

• Document reference conditions
• Derive restoration targets
• Design site-specific restoration plan
• Implement the plan
• Monitor change and assess success
• Employ adaptive management

“The EEP mission is to restore, enhance, preserve and protect the functions associated with wetlands, streams, and riparian areas, including … restoration, maintenance and protection of water quality and riparian habitats …”

Ecosystem Enhancement Program
Biennial Budget FY 2005/06 and 2006-07
Cost by Category:
3% 5%
Total $175,077,880
Administration
33% Restoration
HQ
Preservation
59% Project
Summary
Administration
Restoration*
$ 9,477,939
$ 102,910,770
Development
HQ Preservation
Biennial Total
$ 57,984,804
Project Development $ 4,704,366 * Includes Implementation and
$ 175,077,880 Future Mitigation Projects

Stream Restoration
Durham, NC

• Consult brief habitat-based plant lists
• Design a site-specific restoration plan
• Implement the plan
• Monitor survival of planted stems 5 yrs
• Replant if needed

• EEP wants to do a better job creating natural ecosystems.
• CVS provides improved reference data, target design, monitoring, and data management and analysis

• Simple goal – Deliver composition goal based on the vegetation type most appropriate for the site and region.
• Sophisticated goal – Automated system that uses site information and reference plot data to predict vegetation composition.

Longleaf pine – feasibility study
• Few longleaf pine sites remain in “original” condition.
• Restoration targets must be extrapolated from a limited number of reference stands.

Dataset:
-188 plots across fall-line sandhills of NC, SC, & GA
- All sites contained near-natural, firemaintained groundlayer vegetation
- Soil attributes included for both the A and B horizon: sand, silt, clay, Ca, Mg, K, P,
S, Mn, Na, Cu, Zn, Fe, BD, pH, organic content, CEC, BS.

Step 1. Classification.
Developed a classification of the major vegetation types of the ecoregion.
Used cluster analysis with a matrix of 188 plots x 619 species.
Vegetation types were seen to be differentiated with respect to soil texture, moisture, nutrient status, & geography.

Step 2. Build model.
- Forward selection with linear discriminant analysis identified predictor variables.
- Critical variables were Latitude,
Manganese, Phosphorus, Clay, Longitude.
- 75% of plots correctly identified to vegetation series. Typically 75% of plots within a series were correctly classified to community type.

Step 3. Select species.
1. Generate a list of all species in type (species pool) with frequency, mean cover values, and mean richness.
2.Randomly order the list
3.Compare species frequency to random number between 0 & 1, and if the random number is less than the proportion of plots the species is selected. Continue until the number in list of selected species equals the number predicted.

Summary of overall strategy:
• Identify biogeographic region and obtain predictive models.
• Select pool of candidate species for a specific site based on range information.
• Divide restoration site into environmentally homogenous areas, stratifying by topography and soil.
• Use models to select species number and composition.

• Trade off between detail and time.
• EEP protocol seamlessly integrates with CVS methods by allowing a series of sampling levels.
• MS-Access data-entry tool to assure standardize data, easy assimilation, and automated quality control.
• Backend database used for reports and analysis

• Datasheets for monitoring
• Survival & growth of planted stems
• Direction of compositional change
• Rate of change
• Problems needing attention, such as exotic species

“ … ecology is a science of contingent generalizations, where future trends depend
(much more than in the physical sciences) on past history and on the environmental and biological setting.”
Robert May 1986

• Site data: climate, soils, topography, etc.
• Taxon attribute data: identification, phylogeny, distribution, life-history, functional attributes, etc.
• Occurrence data: attributes of individuals (e.g., size, age, growth rate) and taxa (e.g., cover, biomass) that occur or cooccur at a site.

Locality
Observation/
Collection Event
Observation or
Community Type
Biodiversity data structure
Observation type database
Observation database
Specimen or Object
Bio-Taxon
Occurrence database
Taxonomic database

• VegBank is a public archive for vegetation plot observations ( http://vegbank.org
).
• VegBank is expected to function for vegetation plot data in a manner analogous to
GenBank.
• Primary data will be deposited for reference, novel synthesis, and reanalysis.
• The database architecture is generalizable to most types of species co-occurrence data.

www.vegbank.org

• Theoretical community ecology. Which taxa occur together, and where, and following what rules?
• Remote sensing. What is really on the ground?
• Monitoring. What changes are really taking place in the vegetation?
• Restoration. What should be our restoration targets?
• Vegetation & species modeling. Where should we expect species & communities to occur after environmental changes?

Biodiversity informatics depends on accurate and precise taxonomy
• Accurate identification and labelling of organisms is a critical part of collecting, recording and reporting biological data.
• Increasingly, research in biodiversity and ecology is based on the integration (and re-use) of multiple datasets.

Standardizing organisms and communities
The problem:
Integration of data potentially representing different times, places, investigators and taxonomic standards.
The traditional solution:
A standard list of organisms / communities.

Standard lists are available for Taxa
Representative examples for higher plants in
North America / US
USDA Plants
ITIS
NatureServe
BONAP
Flora North America http://plants.usda.gov
http://www.itis.usda.gov
These are intended to be checklists wherein the taxa recognized perfectly partition all plants. The lists can be dynamic.

A taxon concept represents a unique combination of a name and a reference.
.
Report -name sec reference .
Name Concept Reference

One concept ofAbies lasiocarpa
USDA Plants & ITIS
Abies lasiocarpa var. lasiocarpa var. arizonica

A narrow concept of Abies lasiocarpa
Flora North America
Abies lasiocarpa
Abies bifolia
Partnership with USDA plants to provide plant concepts for data integration

• Congruent, equal (=)
• Includes (>)
• Included in (<)
• Overlaps (><)
• Disjunct (|)
• and others …

High-elevation fir trees of western US
AZ NM CO WY MT AB eBC wBC WA OR
Distribution var. arizonica
USDA & ITIS
Abies lasiocarpa var. lasiocarpa
Abies bifolia
Flora North America
Abies lasiocarpa
A. lasiocarpa sec USDA
A. lasiocarpa sec USDA
A. lasiocarpa v. lasiocarpa sec USDA >
>
>
A. lasiocarpa v. lasiocarpa sec USDA |
A. lasiocarpa v. arizonica sec USDA <
A. lasiocarpa sec FNA
A. bifolia sec FNA
A. lasiocarpa sec FNA
A. bifolia sec FNA
A. bifolia sec FNA

Andropogon virginicus complex in the Carolinas
9 elemental units; 17 base concepts; 25 names

Concept relationships of Southeastern US plants treated in different floras.
Based on > 50,000 mapped concepts

When reporting the identity of organisms in publications, data, or on specimens, provide the full scientific name of each kind of organism and the reference that provided the taxonomic concept.
e.g., Abies lasiocarpa sec. Flora North
America 1997.

• Which taxa to recommend for restoration planting ? – CVS descriptions and tools
• Determine how well plantings have worked ?
– CVS monitoring
• What to grow in anticipation of the market ?
– CVS descriptions & EEP predictions
• How to document identifications ?
– NCU concepts
• What are the natural conditions under which a taxon typically grows ?
– CVS database

Diversity and invasibility of southern Appalachian plant communities.

Montane riparian habitats
New River - Scoured Island
Nolichucky River - Uplands
Little Tennessee River - Floodplain
Nolichucky River –
Bedrock Scour Bar

Upland
(1090 plots)
Riparian
(121 plots)
Native
31.12
55.66
Exotic
0.20
(268 plots with exotics)
7.98
(110 plots with exotics)
Kruskal-Wallis: Native Richness Χ 2 = 353.2, df = 1, P < 0.0001
Exotic Richness Χ 2 = 127.7, df = 1, P < 0.0001

Community saturation at small scales?
Does the degree to which immigration or extinction processes affect communities vary with scale?

Relationship between Native and Exotic
Species Richness at a Large Scale

Relationship between Native and Exotic
Species Richness at a Local Scale

Case Study – The lower Roanoke River

Roanoke basin

COMMUNITY TYPE VEGETATION CLASS
IA
IB
I. Upland Oak Forest
IIE
IIF
IIG
IIH
IIA
IIB
IIC
IIDi
IIDii
II. Mixed Mesic Forest
IIIA
IIIB
IIIC
IIIDi
IIIG
IIIDii
IIIE
IIIF
IIIHi
IIIHii
III. Alluvial Hardwood Forest
IVA
IVB
V
VIA
VIB
VIC
VID
VIIAi
VIIAii
VIIB
VIIC
VIII
IX
X
IV. Forested Peatland
V. Non-riverine Swamp Forest
VI. Blackwater Swamp Forest
VII. Brownwater Swamp Forest
VIII. Sand and Mud Bar Vegetation
IX. Freshwater Marsh Vegetation
X. Floating Aquatic Vegetation

5.5
5
4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
Surface Elevation
Ragweed Horizon
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100
Distance from River (m)
Pre-settlement floodplain surface: -82 cm
Darker
Gley

• US Forest Service – Savannah River Site;
Clean Air Program; National Forests in NC
• The Nature Conservancy
• NC Heritage Trust Fund
• NC Agricultural Research Service
• Syngenta
• National Park Service
• National Science Foundation
• NC-DENR – Ecosystem Enhancement Program

• Description, classification, and analysis of the natural vegetation of the Carolinas
• Determine attributes of individual taxa
• Inventory
• Targets for restoration
• Long-term monitoring – both natural and modified lands
• It’s fun, and you are invited !!