National Agri-Environmental Standards Initiative (NAESI): Potential Natural Vegetation Modeling

Client: Environment Canada

Spatialworks recently completed a project under the NAESI initiative to model Potential Natural Vegetation (PNV) for the NAESI Eastern Ontario pilot area. PNV provided a baseline natural condition for comparison with current and modeled landscape scenarios using a suite of landscape and wildlife habitat measures.

PNV was modeled using a simulation approach which included:

• Predicting climax cover types for agricultural and developed areas using information on existing natural cover types and independent variables of physical conditions (soil, terrain, geology with a Classification and Regression Tree approach
• Spatially simulating the landscape several times over 500 years using succession and natural disturbance in VDDT / TELSA
• Combining model runs to define dominant ecosites and age classes to create PNV map products and statistical summaries including temporal trends and bounds of variation of land cover and age.

The PNV information developed has been incorporated in integrated hydrologic modeling, and assessment of wildlife habitat and landscape patterns as part of the overall NAESI Biodiversity project.