San Diego Plant Atlas Project

[Parsa]

The San Diego Natural History Museum began a new project a year ago to obtain samples of every plant species in the county. The Museum already did the same for birds between 1997 and 2002. Now the torch has passed to the botany department.

 

Volunteers become "parabotanists" and are trained to obtain samples of plants, and to press and dry them for the herbarium collection at the museum. Since the location of the collected plant is important, GPS receivers come in quite handy for the project.

 

I'm a member of the project and have taken on two grid squares near Escondido, one of which covers Daley Ranch. [Grids squares H10 and H11.]

 

Although not essential, I'm trying to teach myself to key plants in order to identify the species of each plant I collect. The actual identification is done by the chief botanist.

 

In just one year, the project has collected 6200 specimens, and discovered 48 species undocumented in the County (12 native and 36 non-native taxa).

 

Here are some links for the project:

 

Main page:

http://www.sdnhm.org/plantatlas/index.html

 

Parabotanist home page with resources:

http://www.sdplantatlas.org/botany/(w2obeh...5v1)/index.aspx

 

Plant Atlas grid map with assigned and open squares:

http://www.sdplantatlas.org/botany/(w2obeh...v1)/Squares.htm

 

Current Training Schedule

http://www.sdplantatlas.org/botany/(w2obeh...)/training.html

 

Parsa

(S. Varner)

Edited October 11, 2004 by Parsa

[+norbu]

David and I went to the parabotanists training over a year ago. It was a very good training. David is involved as a rep of SDRP, we are participating and it is a Great program. Highly recommended.

[+Dan-oh]

That sounds very cool. My wife may want to get some specifics from you about the class and the project. I dabbled with plant keys just a little bit in college (but I didn't inhale) and realized just how difficult they are.

 

-Leaves opposite or verticillate

-Leaves alternate (excl. distichous monocots)

-Leaves distichous (monocots only)

-Leaves equitant (e.g. Iris)

-Leaves peltate

-Leaves not compound

-Leaves compound

-Leaves pinnately compound (4 or more leaflets)

-Leaves ternately compound (3 leaflets)

-Leaves palmately compound (4 or more leaflets)

-Venation pinnate or hardly visible in leaves or leaflets (incl. no. 30)

and on...

 

You've probably realized leaves aren't the half of it. Utimately, plant taxonomy comes down to flower types.

Oooh, the list of flower parts!

 

Dan-oh

para-horticulturist

landscaper-extraordinaire

geocacher-sub par

[Parsa]

Fortunately, there aren't THAT many plants in one county as compared to the state. Although the standard reference book is the Jepson Manual that covers all of California, most of the plants are found in "A Flora of San Diego County." I have some specialized books that should make things easier. I have one book on oaks of Southern Cal, one on Coastal and Chaparral flowering plants of So Cal, one on California trees and shrubs, etc. There are web site links from the parabotanist web site such as CalPhotos that show photos of almost every species.

 

But even if you don't know a moss from a pine tree, it really doesn't matter as long as you can get one sample of every plant you see in the grid square. Even if you send in more than one sample of a species, it's no big deal. Some plants like monkey flowers (Mimulus sp.) vary a lot within a species, but who cares if they get a couple samples of that plant.

 

By the way, you can see what they will be doing with the data by looking at this example from the bird atlas data:

http://www.sdnhm.org/research/birdatlas/yellowwarbler.html

 

Parsa

[Parsa]

The only thing that annoys me is the distrust the project has of GPS receivers.

The main problem as I see it is that the parabotanists are not trained in using a GPSr.

I can take a dozen readings over time and come up with a good mean position good to less than 15 feet.

 

However, they are saying to plot your position on a topo map, then get the coordinates off Topozone. I have to ask... how do you know the point you plot on the topo map is where you really are? That takes a heck of a lot more skill and training than reading a GPS receiver. You might have to triangulate your location by taking back bearings off peaks or something. In a wild area on the topo there may just not be any nearby landmark to say "I'm near that object."

Then you have to make sure the point you click on Topozone is correct, and I seriously doubt if the clicks translate into as precise a reading as you'll get on the GPSr. From my perspective, I'd say they'd be better off training the parabotanists how to use a GPSr correctly.

 

The FAQ on the web site says "recreational" GPS receivers are 50 or more feet off. When was that? My ancient Garmin 12XL gives precision down to 3 or 4 meters (9-12 feet) most of the time. I'm sure that just looking at a topo map and plotting a position on it is going to give you more error than that. Just the map scale alone would give you more than 50 foot error. Then you have the triangulation errors (if you even bother with that), and the errors from Topozone.

 

Parsa

[edmcnierney]

Actually, the coordinates you get from TopoZone are *far* more accurate than your GPSr. The real question is whether the symbol you're aiming for on the topographic map is in the right place!

 

Topo maps are produced to the USGS's National Map Accuracy Standards, a very long document you can find at http://topomaps.usgs.gov - different things are required to be mapped with different levels of accuracy. To grossly oversimplify, there's nothing on a topo map that you should expect to be better than +/- 40 feet from its true location. It MIGHT be closer, but you can't rely on it.

 

As far as getting 3-4 meter accuracy from your Garmin, I doubt you're really getting that. How do you know? How are you testing it? A good (not perfect) test would be to choose a few sites and visit them at various times of the day over several days. Measure their locations and see how repeatable the results are.

 

Recreational GPSr units can be used well, but they require careful planning and use to get optimal results. And unlike "mapping grade" GPSr devices, the recreational units do not report enough data to really do a good job of assessing how accurate the data really is. They can be very powerful tools, but don't oversell them.

[Parsa]

I'm sure a lot of the data you're giving is correct...

 

I've found quite a few caches, some of which are tiny things the size of perfume samplers. I guess if my GPSr lets me find them, it means it's not too bad at giving me correct coordinates. I've also gone out with other cachers, and we usually end up standing a few feet away from each other when we zero out.

 

Parsa