Setting National Vegetation Policies

The US Forest Service’s Forest and Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA), analyzes, reports, and distributes data about the Nation’s forest resources. FIA systematically collects nationwide forest inventory plot data across the United States.  A collaborative effort between FIA and NatureServe is developing a computerized key that will automate assignment of an NVC macrogroup  (nation-wide) and group (west) to forest land conditions in the annual FIA inventory record.

Crosswalking to Ensure Cross-Agency Collaboration

Federally funded vegetation classification projects must collect, record, and classify data and information in a manner that allows others to “crosswalk” their vegetation classes to some level of the USNVC. Cross-walking increases collaboration across ownership boundaries and helps to manage and identify landscape trend. For example, the US Forest Service crosswalks to the USNVC Macrogroup, Group, and Alliance from the Society of American Foresters Forest Cover Types and from the Society for Range Management Rangeland Cover Types. This ensures a common useful language between foresters, range managers, and scientists and users both within and outside of the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Natural Resource Conservation Service.