Environmental Measurement: Site Documentation

General Objectives

The overall objective is to produce a map that is properly scaled, has locations of key features marked, is rich with annotations and is supplemented with data such as photographs and climate data.

Producing this map will require considerable work in the field. Items that need to be established include:

• Overall location (e.g., site within island)
• Specific location (e.g., GPS coordinates)
• Boundaries of the site
• Access
• Descriptive characteristics (overall vegetation, cover)
• Slope
• Aspect
• Elevation
• Notable features (trails, streams, human artifacts, general plant community structure)
• Photographs of important plants, plant communities, and other features

Product

The product of a site documentation include the following:

• Map (site boundaries, scale, orientation, notable features)
• Descriptions of items that are not easily contained on the map
• Data collections (generally these should be tied to geographic coordinates)
• Photographs
• Voucher specimens