Special Status Vascular Plant Surveys and Habitat Modeling in Yosemite National Park, 2003?2004

The NPS I&M program grouped national parks across the United States into 32 networks and, in 2000, initiated the inventory phase of the I&M program. The first task was to create a biological inventory plan to cover this five-year phase aimed at determining the status of vertebrates and vascular plants in U.S. national parks. Following I&M guidelines, Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and USGS staff produced the plan in 2001, defining goals, policy, and specific projects for implementation (NPS 2001). They followed a prescribed process to, first, determine the level of knowledge regarding vertebrate and vascular plant occurrence in parks and then to address the status of species of special management concern. They interpreted the latter as special-status taxa and non-native plants and animals. Among the projects identified for Yosemite was determining the status of special-status vascular plant species. This report details the results of that two-year project implemented by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) under an inter-agency agreement with the National Park Service.