The Vascular Plant Floristics of Denali National Park and Preserve: A Summary, Including the Results of Plant Inventory Fieldwork 1998-2001
Dates
Year
2004
Citation
Roland, Carl A., 2004, The Vascular Plant Floristics of Denali National Park and Preserve: A Summary, Including the Results of Plant Inventory Fieldwork 1998-2001: : Denali Park, AK, v. CAKN-04-01.
Summary
A reconnaissance inventory of the vascular plant flora of Denali National Park and Preserve was conducted during the period 1998-2001. The primary goal of this project was to synthesize existing floristic information with the results of targeted original inventory field work in order to produce a voucher-based list of the vascular plant species that occur within the Park. In order to accomplish this fundamental goal of documenting the flora of Denali National Park and Preserve there were five major objectives that needed to be met: 1) to assemble all available pre-existing floristic data into a highly functional database; 2) to assess the strengths and weaknesses of this existing data set and identify geographic and taxonomic gaps [...]
Summary
A reconnaissance inventory of the vascular plant flora of Denali National Park and Preserve was conducted during the period 1998-2001. The primary goal of this project was to synthesize existing floristic information with the results of targeted original inventory field work in order to produce a voucher-based list of the vascular plant species that occur within the Park. In order to accomplish this fundamental goal of documenting the flora of Denali National Park and Preserve there were five major objectives that needed to be met: 1) to assemble all available pre-existing floristic data into a highly functional database; 2) to assess the strengths and weaknesses of this existing data set and identify geographic and taxonomic gaps in our knowledge of Denali National Park and Preserve’s flora; 3) to perform targeted vascular plant inventory fieldwork in order to effectively fill the existing data gaps and to assemble a complete, voucher-based vascular plant flora for Denali National Park and Preserve; 4) to create a GIS data layer delineating the floristic regions of Denali National Park and Preserve, and to summarize and present all existing floristic information available for the Park in this context; 5) to synthesize the results of both existing and new floristic investigations from original field work into a report describing the state of our knowledge concerning the vascular plant floristics of Denali National Park and Preserve. Vascular plant inventories were performed documenting the flora of 197 sites across the landscape of Denali National Park and Preserve. This set of sites included a broad cross-section of habitats from aquatic communities in large boreal lakes to high alpine scree slopes. I estimate that approximately 1,358 hours of actual survey time were spent in the field recording plant species occurrences and making voucher collections. Over 4,000 plant specimens were collected as a part of this study, and a total of 3,793 permanent voucher specimens were prepared from these collections. The set of specimens collected during this inventory documents the occurrence of about 622 separate vascular plant species within the Park (which represents approximately 83 percent of all of the species presently known to occur there). This collection represents an addition of 224 plant species and 246 separate taxa (including subspecies and varieties) to the vouchered vascular flora of the Park, as compared to the list of taxa known to occur in the Park that was prepared in 1996-7. In addition, this set of new taxa represents 52 genera and 14 families of plants that were not known to occur in the Park prior to 1998. Two hundred and thirty-five specimens of forty-six different taxa considered rare in Alaska by the Alaska Natural Heritage Program (AKNHP) were collected during this inventory. Eight of these taxa had an AKNHP State-level rarity rank of S2 or lower.
