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Soil, Geomorphology and Pre-European Settlement Vegetation Associations of Southwest Louisiana

Metadata Updated: July 21, 2024

Defining the pre-European range of vegetation communities can enhance our understanding of the role soil, hydrology, and climate had on climax plant communities within southwest Louisiana. Coastal prairie grasslands were in a perpetual state of succession due to two primary disturbances; grazing, primarily by bison and other ungulates, and fires ignited by lightning and Native Americans. Along its borders, prairie vegetation blended into adjacent plant communities forming biologically diverse ecotones that may have fluctuated between a prairie, marsh, or forest dominated community as a result of variable conditions including climate cycles, disturbance and soil characteristics. Since European settlement, this landscape has undergone dramatic change with less than 1% of intact coastal prairie remaining. Conservation entities across the Western Gulf Coastal Plain are taking a collaborative, strategic, landscape scale approach to pollinator conservation. This effort encourages communication and implementation of restoration and habitat enhancement actions within water sheds. We have produced a spatial dataset which considers landscape position and soil type, based on Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) data, to predict appropriate vegetation associations for plantings across southwest Louisiana based on expert elicitation, and historic references. Methods to produce this product begin with soil boundaries and identification information using Map Unit Keys (MUKEY) which were gathered from SSURGO data (Soil Survey Staff, NRCS 2017). Each mukey number was reviewed on the SOIL WEB to obtain information about components. Components include the proportion and general geomorphic features associated with soil series. Natural vegetation associations were examined and documented for each soil series individually using multiple references, including USDA Soil Series descriptions, expert elicitation, and historical spatial references. Professional reference maps contributed to this spatial dataset and include an 1863 work by Henry L. Abbot and numerous General Land Office surveyor maps and surveyor descriptions from the early 1800s drawn at the scale of a township. General vegetation categories associated with Soil Types (Mukey) were derived from reviewing the vegetation associations of the dominant components, or soil series. These general categories include: anthropogenic, prairie, transition, forest, marsh, swamp, uncertain, and water. Anthropogenic categories were generally due to significant dredging, or other industrial activities. Transitional areas included savannas and areas which may have significantly changed from prairie to forest dominated communities due to rainfall and/or fire frequency and intensity. Forest and swamp includes a range of forest types from which the distinction between these two categories primarily depend upon relative elevation and hydrology. There were a few soil series in which we are uncertain of their pre-settlement vegetation. These areas are anomalies on the landscape and include salt domes and old, disjunct river meanders which are largely comprised of Pleistocene soils and were most likely marais, yet currently much of it is heavily forested as bottomlands, and we are therefore uncertain if this result is solely due to absence of fire. Attribute data include MUKEYs within the parishes which are included in the Louisiana portion of the Gulf Coastal Plain Ecoregion. Information in the table includes symbols, common names, and components which were compiled from SSURGO dataset and Soil Web online resources (Soil Survey Staff, NRCS, accessed 2/2017). For more detailed vegetation associations for individual soil series, please refer to 'VegSoilAssoc_SWLA.pdf' or 'VegSoilAssoc_SWLA.csv'.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 21, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 21, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/9367a975d996dd9f6d8b1a2c3148e8e3
Identifier USGS:5925eb8de4b0b7ff9fb3cc09
Data Last Modified 20240718
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id ed2c79a9-1c40-4558-b7e3-e113b8ac38a2
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -93.928,29.2407,-91.0827,31.0008
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash e213b4fa9e3e2a2e7708295fca5d6908b334d7018edafb24eff66bd111f9235e
Source Schema Version 1.1
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