California Native Plant Society (CNPS) and California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) cooperated to created a detailed vegetation inventory to assist the Bureau of Land Management in the development of long-range management decisions in the area, which has a range of uses from a wilderness study area to grazing, mining, and off-road vehicles. In the spring and summer of 2004 and 2005, a field crew of vegetation ecologists collected 570 vegetation rapid assessments. In the fallwinter of 2004-2005, these data were entered into a database and analyzed using multivariate statistical programs to develop a floristic classification, keys, and descriptions of the vegetation types identified in the area. AIS then did a fine-scale mapping based on the classification which was compared to mapping based on CalVeg methodologies. This provided a test case for the development of vegetation mapping methodologies with recommendations to the California State Vegetation Memorandum of Understanding Committee.
