Page 9 - Interp Book

Executive Summary

State wildlife biologists and other natural resource professionals have recognized the
need for accurate current vegetation maps to facilitate conservation planning and
management for decades. The Oklahoma Geographic Information Council has pursued
avenues to up-date and improve statewide current vegetation maps for at least the five
years before this project began. Meanwhile, in Texas, a group led by the Texas Parks
and Wildlife Department launched an effort to develop fine spatial and thematic
resolution current vegetation maps for Texas, the Texas Ecological Systems Mapping
Project, in the summer of 2007 (Elliott et al. 2014). Results of this effort were reviewed
by personnel within the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) in the
spring of 2011. Likewise, personnel within the Gulf Coast Prairie and Great Plains
Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) were aware of results coming from the
Texas project. The LCCs required seamless current vegetation data across state lines.
Thus, the Oklahoma Ecological Systems classification and mapping project was
launched in 2012 with initial funding from the ODWC and LCCs, and was finished by the
summer of 2015. Funding to collect ground data and assist with classification and
mapping was provided to the Oklahoma Biological Survey, University of Oklahoma.
Funding to complete remote sensing, mapping, and interpretive information was
provided to the Missouri Resource Assessment Partnership (MoRAP), University of
Missouri. MoRAP was also the primary partner involved in the Texas Ecological
Systems mapping project, and used expertise developed during that project to apply
toward the Oklahoma project. Key state cooperators (e.g. representatives within the
Oklahoma Geographic Information Council) were brought into the process early on via
presentations both at a general meeting and at a land cover technical committee
meeting. Groups represented within the Council will be among the primary end users,
stewards, and modifiers of the current vegetation data under development.

The Ecological Systems Classification for the US, accessible via the NatureServe
Explorer website, served as the basis for classification and mapping. This classification
has been modified for Oklahoma and a 69-page document was delivered under
separate cover to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. The basic
classification and mapping methods incorporated remote sensing for land cover (about
15 classes), and overlay of digital soils, %slope, and streams to create the map. A total
of 3,709 georeferenced, quantitative data points were gathered in a systematic way,
and 1,114 more georeferenced points were gathered to help improve the map. A total
of 165 vegetation types were mapped. Summary statistics from points show that three
of the most frequent six species in the herbaceous layer were non-native species. Post
oak was by far the most common tree encountered. The primary grassland types of
Oklahoma together accounted for more than a third of the area of the state, and
cropland made up more than 15% of the area. More than half of the mapped types
occupy fewer than 10,000 hectares of the state.

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