The NWGAP has completed draft land cover map depicting the distribution of Ecological Systems across Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Wyoming. Three mapping teams were involved with mapping NWGAP's 12 map zones; (1) Oregon State University and U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Corvallis, OR (2) Sanborn Solutions, Inc., Portland, OR, and (3) NWGAP, Moscow, ID. Different modeling approaches were explored to evaluate the effectiveness of each to represent the natural distribution of ES within each map zone and across the region. Oregon State University used Gradient Nearest Neighbor (GNN) and Random Forest modeling techniques, while Sanborn and NWGAP used a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) modeling approach. Frequent communication among the mapping teams ensured consistent application of each ES definition and seamless representation across the region.

Collectively, the 12 NWGAP map zones depict the distribution of 173 ES classes and 32 land cover and disturbed classes across the Northwest. Of the 173 ES classes, 24 are barren or sparsely vegetated, 22 are grassland systems, 31 are shrub or steppe systems, 54 are forest, woodland, or savanna systems, and 43 are wetland and riparian systems. The 32 land cover and disturbed classes consist of 15 developed or agricultural lands classes, 7 introduced vegetation classes, 4 harvested vegetation type classes, and 3 recently burned habitat classes. Deterministic accuracy rates for many ES are greater than 80 percent.

The maps were reviewed by Northwestern vegetation ecologists and finalized in December 2008.

The finalized land cover data will be used as one of the primary modeling inputs for NWGAP vertebrate modeling.

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