USGS:Biology Biological Informatics Program Vegetation Characterization Program Tools & Links

Tools & Links

USEFUL LINKS

Federal

• National Biological Information Infrastructure
• Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS)
• Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Home Page
• Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Vegetation Subcommittee
• National Park Service (NPS) Home Page
• NPS Inventory & Monitoring Program
• NPS I&M Program NRBIB - Natural Resources Bibliography
• NPS Geospatial Data Server
• Spatial Data Transfer Standard (SDTS) Information Site
• Gap Analysis Program (GAP)
• National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse (USGS node of NSDI)

Other Organizations

• The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Home Page
• TNC's "Terrestrial Vegetation of the United States"
• Nature Serve Home Page
• The Ecological Society of America
• NatureServe an online encyclopedia of life
• Fire Island Vegetation Mapping Project

TOOLS

• Metamaker



MetaMaker is a metadata data entry program which is freely available for downloading from http://metadata.nbii.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=255&&PageID=338&mode=2&in_hi_userid=2&cached=true.

• Plot Database



The Plots Database is a set of software tools developed under contract from the USGS Center for Biological Informatics by The Nature Conservancy for field data collection and analysis. It is available for downloading. This software may potentially be used as the tool for aiding in the expansion and refinement of the lower levels of the National Vegetation Classification Standard. (Future plans include making this software available as an interactive web based program.)

• GRASS



Geographic Resource Analysis Support System (GRASS) is a Geographic Information System (GIS) tool for data management, image processing, graphics production, spatial modelling, and visualization of many types of data. There are several sources of information relating to GRASS, including:

Baylor University, Waco, Texas The official web site for the GRASS Research Group.
The GRASS Information Center at the Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
US Army Corps of Engineers, Construction Engineering Research Laboratories.
GRASSLAND A commercial windows based GIS package based around GRASS command language for the Windows 95 and Windows NT platforms.
Blackland GRASS A Commercial program which allows any 32-bit INTEL-PC user (WIN 95/NT) to access a GRASS database and manipulate data much like the UNIX GRASS program.

• OGC



Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is an approach to creating geoprocessing interoperability within the distributed architecture of the Internet, despite incompatible formats and data structures.