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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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

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

7. 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!

8. 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

9. 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)…

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

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

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. Anticipatingcontinued collaboration