Planning tools Working together to restore North Carolinas

Planning tools Working together to restore North Carolina's natural communities

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

Current Web Tools Summary tables for 370 vegetation types in NC Limitation: requires that user knows which of the 370 types is of interest at restoration site

Where we are going CVS is developing tools and data sources to facilitate planning of restoration activities and to evaluate their success. New data sources and tools are being designed Suggestions for new tools and increased functionality.

Why Now? ? By June 30, ALL 7000 plots in CVS will have been mapped onto NVC community type Species names have been mapped onto ‘single’ taxonomic concept New Archive Database for Level 5 plots

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

Future Summary Tables Designed to identify a restoration target WITHOUT knowing the identity of a vegetation type: DATA CONTRACTOR PLUGS IN: 1) Spatial 2) Environmental WEB-BASED TOOL OUTPUTS: Restoration Target!

Future Summary Tables, cont Benefits of Restoration Site Summary Tables include: Reduce time EEP staff invest in developing restoration targets More ecologically meaningful Ensure that recommendations are based on sites from the same geographic region Link to planting list database

Evaluation of Planting List We propose to develop a database tool that automatically evaluates the species list for any one project Reduces cost, time EEP staff invest in developing and evaluating planting lists Tool would draw on 4 datasets (continued)…

Dataset 1: SE Floristic Atlas NCU RAB Carya carolinae-septentrionalis

Dataset 2: Drainage Basin. Environmental Criteria Assess which communities are possible within a region and certain environmental conditions then compare to proposed species list

Dataset 3: Environmental Tolerance Assess range of environmental tolerance for every species, based on occurrence within natural vegetation plots in NC. Compare these environmental conditions with those that exist at a restoration site.

Dataset 4: Past EEP Projects Examine the success of species used in earlier EEP projects on similar sites. Past success can be deduced from CVS-managed data from monitoring studies.

Anticipating continued collaboration