Vegetation Study Clause Samples

Vegetation Study. Objectives: 1. Conduct baseline plant community surveys within project area. 2. Re-survey a subset of monitoring transects from previous work 3. Conduct community wide vegetation survey across the Lake Plain habitats The surveys will provide species-level identification for vascular plants, including grasses, sedges and rushes. For objective 1, the surveys will be conducted at 25 sites, each 100 m2 in size. Each site will document the complete list pf vascular plants, as well as estimates of abundance. Sites will be equally distributed among the shrub removal project areas and among habitat types (mixture of upland and lowland shrub communities. The center of each site will be established using random point generator in a GIS and then located in the field using a high accuracy (sub-meter) GPS unit. For Objective 2, the surveys will be conducted at 30 vegetation transects that were established prior to wetland restoration (2011) to document the effects of herbicide treatment and assess the natural re-establishment of native sedges and forbs and overall floristic quality in comparison to remnant wetlands. For Objective 3, at least 20 new transects will be established to better represent the broader range of spatial and edaphic variation in vegetation communities across the Lake Plain and placed in key areas of landscape connectivity and ecological integrity, such as the Exelon property and the southern unit of Illinois Beach State Park. In addition, at least 10 new transects will be established in areas in the Lakeplain that have a history of development, including the golf course, sub-divisions and the former Camp ▇▇▇▇▇ Wetland transects for the cattail and Phragmites control work were established across wetland gradients and were each 30 meters long, with a series of 5 nested quadrats every 3 meters in which we recorded a complete species list and a cover class for each species within the quadrat. To quantify shrub abundance for the shrub control work, we established a circular plot of 100 m2 for which we made complete species list with cover class estimates for each species. In addition, we estimated the density of all woody species within three size classes. Each site will be sampled once during the peak season for plant identification (June). Sites will be revisited in late August to resolve later blooming species that may have been missed (or were unidentifiable) in the spring sample. Following field sampling and data processing, we will prepare a repo...