Global Change Research Wetland Vegetation Composition 1972 and 2010

This dataset consists of geospatial files representing vegetation zones for Kirkpatrick Marsh and the Global Change Research Wetland, a tidal brackish marsh on the Rhode River in Maryland. Shapefiles represent two moments in time, one based on a high-resolution areal imagery from 1972, the other from 2010. Vegetation zones include native graminoids Schoenoplectus americanus and Spartina patens, the native shrub Iva frutescens, the invasive reed Phragmites australis, as well as mixed communities.

The dataset consists of two shapefiles, one titled Communities1972, representing the 1972 map, and Communities_DissolvedNE, representing the 2010 map. The shapefiles consists of several files which need to be grouped together to view in Geographic Information System software.

.dbf – Attribute format; Tabular data associated with geometric features

.shp – Shape format; Geometry of the features

.shz- Shape index; Positional index of each feature

.prj – Projection description

.shp.xml – Geospatial metadata

.cpg – Specifies the code page for identifying character encoding.

The dataset also contains a report, Methods of generating Kirkpatrick Marsh maps.pdf, which contains a report detailing the materials and methods that went into generating these maps.