Fire Island National Sea Shore

Remote Sensing of Terrestrial and Submerged Aquatic Vegetation in the Fire Island National Seashore: Towards Long-term Resource Management and Monitoring

The vegetation communities and spatial patterns on Fire Island are dynamic with the impacts from forces such as sand deposition, storm-driven over wash, salt spray, and surface water (Klopfer et al., 2002). A vegetation mapping project at Fire Island National Seashore has been recently accomplished as part of the National Park Service (NPS) Vegetation Mapping Project (Klopfer, et al., 2002). The project applied georeferenced true-color aerial photographs to delineate and interpret vegetation polygons. The five broadly defined vegetation groups include salt marsh, dune grassland, dune shrubland, interdunal swale, and forest/shrubland. These vegetation groups were further classified into 27 different associations. A total of 39 land cover classes were mapped. The project provides the baseline information for the Fire Island National Seashore.

We notice that two further efforts are needed to enhance the results out of the completed Vegetation Mapping project. First, the vegetation mapping project suggested that updates to the vegetation mapping product should be completed on a regular basis to ensure the dynamic changes of the communities be included. Therefore, exploration of new data and approaches that could efficiently update the vegetation maps is necessary. Recent development of high spatial resolution satellite remote sensing data, such as the QuickBird-2 satellite data that possess 0.61-meter spatial resolution for the panchromatic band and 2.5-meter spatial resolution for the multispectral bands (visible to near infrared), can meet the needs of the project. The capability of repeated data acquisition by the QuickBird-2 data could facilitate the practice in dynamic vegetation monitoring.

Secondly, a missing component from the vegetation types mapped in the previous Fire Island National Seashore project is the information about submerged aquatic vegetation, such as seagrass species and beds. Seagrass communities are among the richest and most productive coastal systems. They protect and improve water quality, provide shoreline stabilization, and are important habitats for an array of fish, birds, and other wildlife. Natural and human impacts on these vital resources from population growth, pollution, physical damage and other activities can disrupt the growth of seagrass communities and have devastating effects on their health and vitality. Inventory and monitoring are required to determine the dynamics of seagrass ecosystem and devise better management and restoration for these rich resources. Therefore, an effort in extraction of information about submerged aquatic vegetation along the Fire Island National Seashore becomes necessary.

(Project Progress Slides)

A copy of the project publication in Marine Geodesy in 2007.

A copy of the Draft Report can be checked here.