Describing Vegetation with Neighboring Agencies:
Cover Type vs. National Vegetation Classification Standard

Vegetation is common to all the land management agencies, and we all use a variety of adjectives to describe it, evaluate it, and tie the vegetation condition to some form of management goal, ideal, or desired condition. It is important to make datasets as useful and cost effective as possible for the many uses and users of vegetation data. To bridge the commonality and decrease the differences between the agencies, this presentation will give details regarding existing USFS / DOI vegetation datasets, USFS led and Dept of Interior and others collaboration on the 1997 Standard development and hierarchy of the new 2008 Standard revision: Macro Group / Group / Alliance as the more mappable polygon units that are about equivalent to the old Ecological Systems used in GAP and LANDFIRE. The Cross walk efforts at Rocky Mountain NP with the Arapaho Roosevelt and Great Sand Dunes NP with the Rio Grande NF would serve as the case studies described.