glossary



	Center For Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) THE ARKANSAS GAP ANALYSIS PROJECT FINAL REPORT GLOSSARY TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. LANDCOVER CLASSIFICATION AND MAPPING 3. PREDICTED ANIMAL DISTRIBUTIONS AND SPECIES RICHNESS 4. LAND STEWARDSHIP 5. ANALYSIS BASED ON STEWARDSHIP AND MANAGEMENT STATUS 6. CONCLUSIONS AND MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS 7. DATA USE AND AVAILABILITY 8. LITERATURE CITED 9. GLOSSARY 10. GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS 11. APPENDICES AND MAPS aerial videography - video images of the land surface taken from an airplane algorithm - a procedure to solve a problem or model a solution (In GAP typically refers to a GIS procedure used to model animal distributions.) alliance level - a land unit made up of an "alliance" of natural communities that have the same dominant or co-dominant plant species or, in the absence of vegetation, by the dominant landcover typically described according to the Anderson landcover classification (see "Natural Community Alliance" in Grossman et al. 1995) alpha diversity - a single within-habitat measure of species diversity regardless of internal pattern, generally over an area of 0.1 to 1,000 hectares (see Whittaker 1960, 1977) - Anderson Level II - the second hierarchical level in the Anderson landcover classification system (see Anderson et al. 1976) anthropogenic - caused by man assemblages - a group of ecologically interrelated plant and animal species band, spectral - a segment of the electromagnetic spectrum defined by a range of wavelengths (e.g. blue, green, red, near infrared, far infrared) that comprise the Landsat TM imagery beta diversity - the change in species diversity among different natural communities of a landscape; an index of between-habitat diversity (see Whittaker 1960, 1977) biodiversity - generally, the variety of life and its interrelated processes biogeographic - relating to the geographical distribution of plants and animals biological diversity - see biodiversity cartographic - pertaining to the art or technique of making maps or charts classify - to assign objects, features, or areas on an image to spectral classes based upon their appearance as opposed to `classification' referring to a scheme for describing the hierarchies of vegetation or animal species for an area coarse filter - the general conservation activities that conserve the common elements of the landscape matrix, as opposed to the "fine filter" conservation activities that are aimed at special cases such as rare elements (see Jenkins 1985) community - a group of interacting plants and animals



	cover type - a non-technical higher-level floristic and structural description of vegetation cover cross-walking - matching equivalent landcover categories between two or more classification systems delineate - identifying the boundaries between more or less homogenous areas on remotely sensed images as visible from differences in tone and texture delta diversity - the change in species diversity between landscapes along major climatic or physiographic gradients (see Whittaker 1977) digitization - entering spatial data digitally into a Geographic Information System ecoregion - a large region, usually spanning several million hectares, characterized by having similar biota, climate, and physiography (topography, hydrology, etc.). ecosystem - a biological community (ranging in scale from a single cave to millions of hectares), its physical environment, and the processes through which matter and energy are transferred among the components edge-matching - the process of connecting polygons at the boundary between two independently created maps, either between TM scenes or between state GAP data sets element - a plant community or animal species mapped by GAP. May also be referred to as "element of biodiversity". error of commission - the occurrence of a species (or other map category) is erroneously predicted in an area where it is in fact absent error of omission - when a model fails to predict the occurrence of a species that is actually present in an area exact set coverage - a basic optimization problem to determine the best method for identifying general areas that, when selected sequentially, would have the greatest positive cumulative impact on attaining adequate representation of any or all biotic elements of interest extinction - disappearance of a species throughout its entire range extirpation - disappearance of a species from part of its range fine filter - see "coarse filter" floristic - pertaining to the plant species that make up the vegetation of a given area. formation level - the level of landcover categorization between Group and Alliance describing the structural attributes of a land unit, for example, "Evergreen Coniferous Woodlands with Rounded Crowns" (see Jennings 1993b) gamma diversity - the species diversity of a landscape, generally covering 1,000 to 1,000,000 hectares, made up of more than one kind of natural community (see Whittaker 1977) gap analysis - a comparison of the distribution of elements of biodiversity with that of areas managed for their long-term viability to identify elements with inadequate representation geographic information systems - computer hardware and software for storing, retrieving, manipulating, and analyzing spatial data Global Positioning System (GPS) - an instrument that utilizes satellite signals to pinpoint its location on the earth's surface greedy heuristic - an algorithm for exact set cover analysis (see Kiester, in press) ground truthing - verifying maps by checking the actual occurrence of plant and animal species in the field at representative sample locations habitat - the physical structure, vegetational composition, and physiognomy of an area, the characteristics of which determine its suitability for particular animal or plant species hectare - a metric unit of area of 10,000 square meters and equal to 2.47 acres hex/hexagon - typically refers to the EPA EMAP hexagonal grid of 635 square kilometer units hyperclustering - a efficient, interactive method for accurately analyzing and classifying remotely-



	sensed data that reduces data size and computational requirements while retaining the integrity of the original data lotic - flowing, e.g., water in a stream or river metadata - information about data, e.g., their source, lineage, content, structure, and availability minimum mapping unit - the smallest area that is depicted on a map neotropics - the zoogeographic region stretching southward from the tropic of Cancer and including southern Mexico, Central and South America, and the West Indies phenology - the study of periodic biological phenomena, such as flowering, breeding, and migration, especially as related to climate phenotype - the environmentally and genetically determined observable appearance of an organism, especially as considered with respect to all possible genetically influenced expressions of one specific character physiognomic - based on physical features physiographic province - a region having a pattern of relief features or land forms that differ significantly from that of adjacent regions pixel - the smallest spatial unit in a raster data structure polygon - an area enclosed by lines in a vector-based Geographic Information System data layer or a region of contiguous homogeneous pixels in a raster system preprocessing - those operations that prepare data for subsequent analysis, usually by attempts to correct or compensate for systematic, radiometric, and geometric errors proactive - acting in anticipation of an event as opposed to reacting after the fact range - the geographic limit of the species range unit - a spatial, geographic unit to record and display species geographic range. reach - a stream or river segment between inflowing tributaries registration, spatial - matching different images to each other by finding points on the images that can be matched to known points on the ground remote sensing - deriving information about the earth's surface from images acquired at a distance, usually relying on measurement of electromagnetic radiation reflected or emitted from the feature of interest resolution - the ability of a remote sensing system to record and display fine detail in a distinguishable manner or: the smallest feature that can be distinguished or resolved on a map or image, such as a TM pixel scale, map - the ratio of distance on a map to distance in the real word, expressed as a fraction; the smaller the denominator, the larger the scale, e.g. 1:24,000 is larger than 1:100,000 sensitivity analysis - the consideration of a number of factors involved in the mathematical modeling of an ecosystem and its components. These include feedback and control, and the stability and sensitivity of the system as a whole to changes in some part of the system. Predictions can be made from the analysis. simulated annealing - an algorithm used for set coverage analysis (see Kiester, in press) species richness - the number of species of a particular interest group found in a given area spectral cluster - a group of adjacent pixels that are uniform with respect to their brightness values supervised classification - the process of classifying TM pixels of unknown identity by using samples of known identity (i.e., pixels already assigned to informational classes by ground truthing or registration with known landcover) as training data synoptic - constituting a brief statement or outline of a subject; presenting a summary tessellation - the division of a map into areas of equal and uniform shape such as the EPA- EMAP hexagon



	Thematic Mapper - a sensor on LANDSAT 4 and 5 satellites that records information in seven spectral bands, has a spatial resolution of about 30 m x 30 m, and represents digital values in 256 levels of brightness per band transect - a transversely cut line along which physical and biological observations are made trophic structure - the various levels in a food chain, such as producers (plants), primary consumers (herbivores), and secondary consumers (carnivores) Universal Transverse Mercator - one of several map projections or systems of transformations that enables locations on the spherical earth to be represented systematically on a flat map Universal Transverse Mercator grid - a geographic reference system used as the basis for worldwide locational coding of information in a GIS or on a map unsupervised classification - the definition, identification, labeling, and mapping of natural groups, or classes, of spectral values within a scene. These spectral classes are reasonably uniform in brightness in several spectral channels. vector format - a data structure that uses polygons, arcs (lines), and points as fundamental units for analysis and manipulation in a Geographic Information System virtual reality - a computer-generated simulation of reality with which users can interact using specialized peripherals such as data gloves and head-mounted computer graphic displays wildlife habitat relationship model - a method of linking patterns of known habitat use by animal species with maps of existing vegetation, thereby identifying the spatial extent of important habitat features for use in conservation and management.



	Center For Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) THE ARKANSAS GAP ANALYSIS PROJECT FINAL REPORT GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. LANDCOVER CLASSIFICATION AND MAPPING 3. PREDICTED ANIMAL DISTRIBUTIONS AND SPECIES RICHNESS 4. LAND STEWARDSHIP 5. ANALYSIS BASED ON STEWARDSHIP AND MANAGEMENT STATUS 6. CONCLUSIONS AND MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS 7. DATA USE AND AVAILABILITY 8. LITERATURE CITED 9. GLOSSARY 10. GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS 11. APPENDICES AND MAPS ACRONYMS: ACSM - American Congress on Surveying and Mapping ADAMAS - Aquatic Database Management System ADEM - Alabama Department of Environmental Management AML - ARC/INFO Macro Language ASPRS - American Society for Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing AVHRR - Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (satellite system) BEST - Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends BLM - Bureau of Land Management CAFF - Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna C-CAP - Coastwatch Change Analysis Program (NOAA) CDC - Conservation Data Center CEC - Council on Environmental Cooperation CENR - Committee on Environment and Natural Resources CERES - California Environmental Resources Evaluation System CIESIN - Consortium for Internat'l Earth Science Information Network CODA - Conservation Options and Decision Analysis (software) CRMP - Coordinated Resource Management Plan CRT - Cathode ray tube (?) CRUC - Cooperative Research Unit Center DLG-E - Digital line graph - enhanced DOI - - Department of the Interior EDC - EROS Data Center ECOMAP - National Hierarchical Framework of Ecological Units-USFS mapping project EMAP - Environmental Monitoring & Assessment Program EMAP-LC - EMAP-Landscape Characterization (USEPA) EMSL - Environmental Monitoring & Systems Laboratory (USEPA) EMTC - Environmental Management Technical Center (NBS)



	EOS - Earth Observing System EOSAT - Earth Observation Satellite Company EOSDIS - EOS Data & Information System ERL - Environmental Research Laboratory, Corvallis (USEPA) EROS - Earth Resources Observation Systems (USGS) ESRI - Environmental Systems Research Institute ETM+ - Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus FGDC - Federal Geographic Data Committee ftp - file transfer protocol FY - Fiscal Year GAO - General Accounting Office (Congress) GAP - Gap Analysis Program GCDIS - Global Change Data and Information System GLIS - Global Land Information System (USGS) GLOBE - Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment GPS - Global Positioning System GRASS - Geographic Resources Analysis Support System GRIS - Geographic Resource Information Systems HRMSI - High Resolution Multispectral Stereo Imager IALE - International Association of Landscape Ecology IDRISI - A GIS developed by Clark University LAPS - Land Acquisition Priority System LC/LU - Landcover/Land Use (USGS) MIPS - Map and Image Processing System MOU - Memorandum of Understanding MMU - Minimum mapping unit MRLC - Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium MSS - Multi-Spectral Scanner MTPE - Mission to Planet Earth NAFTA - North American Free Trade Agreement NALC - North American Landscape Characterization (USEPA, USGS) NAWQA - National Water Quality Assessment (USGS) NBII - National Biological Information Infrastructure NBS - National Biological Service NCCP - Natural Communities Conservation Planning program (in CA) NDCDB - National Digital Cartographic Data Base NERC - National Ecology Research Center (Ft. Collins, CO) NMD - National Mapping Division NPS - National Park Service NSDI - National Spatial Data Infrastructure NSTC - National Science and Technology Council NWI - National Wetlands Inventory (USFWS) OMB - Office of Management and Budget (Administration) OSIS - Oregon Species Information System PARC - Public Access Resource Center PI - Principal Investigator RAT - Rapid Assessment Track (AR-GAP Accuracy Assessment Approach)



	RMSE - Root mean square error SAB - Science Advisory Board (USEPA) SCICOLL - Scientific Collections Permit Database SDTS - Spatial Data Transfer Standard SGID - State Geographic Information Database SNEP - Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project SOFIA - Southern Forest Inventory and Analysis SPOT - Systme Pour l'Observation de la Terre TIGER - Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system TM - Thematic Mapper TNC - The Nature Conservancy UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization URISA - Urban and Regional Information Systems Association. URL - Universal Resource Locator USFS - US Forest Service USFWS - US Fish & Wildlife Service UTM - Universal Transverse Mercator UVM - University of Vermont WHRM - Wildlife/habitat relationship model WISCLAND - Wisconsin Initiative for Statewide Cooperation on Landcover Analysis and Data