PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 14: GIS and Remote Sensing
Tuesday, August 9, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Alabama GAP: Land cover mapping to produce predicted distribution maps for native vertebrate species.

MacKenzie, Mark^*,1, Kleiner, Kevin², Hogland, John¹, Silvano, Amy², Taylor, Benton², Grand, James³, ¹ Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA² Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA³ USGS, Auburn, Alabama, USA

ABSTRACT- Alabama, and most of the Southeast USA, is rich in biological diversity. However, the number of species threatened with extinction has dramatically increased over the years. Current management approaches put forth to curtail the loss of this biodiversity have generally been focused at the species level through individual recovery programs. Although these conventional approaches have been effective for a handful of species, they are costly, inadequate to combat increasing extinction rates, and neglect the issues contributing to species imperilment such as loss of habitat, fragmentation, and degradation of ecosystems. In an effort to provide resource managers with the information needed to make more informed decisions, investigators at Auburn University are conducting a regionally integrated Gap Analysis Project (GAP) for the State of Alabama and the East Gulf Coastal Plain (EGCP). The Alabama Gap Analysis Project (AL-GAP) is part of a larger regional effort (Southeast GAP or SE-GAP) to map both vegetation and vertebrate species using regionally consistent methodologies and datasets (e.g. land cover units, topography, hydrology, etc) as well as dividing mapping efforts along ecologically distinct boundaries to avoid problems with edge-matching at political boundaries. To date, land cover within the EGCP has been mapped using multi-temporal Landsat enhanced thematic mapper (ETM+) imagery, ancillary data, and decision tree classification to one of 16 types described by the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD). We are currently working to classify the land cover of the EGCP using the Terrestrial Ecological Systems Classification described by NatureServe. These land cover maps are being used as a component in the habitat association models for predicting the distribution of 607 vertebrate species across the region. Additional information and availability of AL-GAP products can be found at www.auburn.edu/gap .

Key words: remote sensing, landsat etm+, biodiversity, gap analysis program