Nevada Natural Heritage Program
Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
901 South Stewart Street, Suite 5002 • Carson City, Nevada 89701-5245
tel: (775) 684-2900 • fax: (775) 684-2909

Ecology Sub-Site

Notes on finding information
on plant communities in Nevada

current as of 16 August 2005

The Nevada Natural Heritage Program (NNHP) intends to develop a compendium of vegetation data for Nevada including:

• 'living' maps of current vegetation (by 'living' we mean that the maps will be updated as new information becomes available)
• maps of modeled potential vegetation for weed management and land restoration
• maps of landscape condition considering remaining or relict ecosystem functions (e.g. soil crusts) as well as invasives (e.g. cheatgrass)
• descriptions and discussions of all plant communities within Nevada, refined to the Association level.

Unfortunately, this product is still years in the future. Here is what is currently available:

The NNHP works with plant communities at 3 levels: Ecological System, Alliance, and Association. Associations are the finest level of resolution. Each association belongs to a single alliance, thus the classification is hierarchical between these levels. Ecological systems were classified with the realities of remote sensing and mapping vast areas (multiple states). Thus they are a broad classification, they are non-hierarchical and they are made up of Associations (not Alliances). A single Association may occur within multiple Ecological Systems. Much like a single plant may occur within multiple communities... one can think of an Ecological System as a cluster of Associations, or a community of communities.

This classification is known as the National Vegetation Classification (see http://biology.usgs.gov/npsveg/nvcs.html) and is officially endorsed by most federal natural resource agencies.

The NNHP has a somewhat old list of Alliances and Associations for Nevada on our website at http://heritage.nv.gov/ecology/nv_nvc.htm

The organization that coordinates between state Heritage Programs, NatureServe, has a great deal of data on their website: www.natureserve.org ... of particular note:

• An Ecological Systems database (http://www.natureserve.org/getData/ecologyData.jsp)
• A document about Ecological Systems (http://www.natureserve.org/library/usEcologicalsystems.pdf) but it does not include the classification itself.
• An online database of species and ecological data that can be used to look up all 3 levels of community data (http://www.natureserve.org/explorer/servlet/NatureServe?init=Ecol).
  • For Associations, this does not include a specific description of the community. However, it gives a list of similar Associations, the Alliance, the Ecological Systems, Ecoregions, States that it occurs in, conservation rank, citations, and more.
  • For Alliances, it does give a detailed description, a list of similar alliances, component associations, Ecoregions, states, and citations (oddly, I don't see the Ecological Systems here)
  • For Ecological Systems, it gives a summary, list of component associations, list of associated at-risk species, states of occurrence, ecoregions, and citations.

The Southwest Regional Gap Analysis Project (GAP) has an Ecological Systems map of the entire state made from year 2000 satellite imagery. You can download it (big file!) and related information at http://earth.gis.usu.edu/swgap/

And, of course, if you have further questions, please contact the Ecologist at the Nevada Natural Heritage Program.