A COMMUNITY CLASSIFICATION-SYSTEM FOR FOREST EVALUATION - DEVELOPMENT, VALIDATION, AND EXTRAPOLATION

A community classification system integrating vegetation and landforms was developed br the 8,054-ha Cheatham Wildlife Management Area (CWMA ), located on the Western Highland Rim of Tennessee, USA, to obtain in formation on which to base multiresource land management decisions. A subjective procedure (synthesis tables) and several objective techniqu es (factor analysis, cluster analysis, and canonical discrimination) w ere used to evaluate importance values of overstory and midstory speci es, coverage values of understory species, and topographic parameters. These procedures were used collectively to guide and to provide evide nce for interpretation of vegetational patterns on the landscape. The eight discrete communities identified on a 482-ha compartment within t he CWMA were: northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.), chestnut oak (Q. pr inus L.), scarlet oak (Q. coccinea Muenchh.), yellow-poplar (Liriodend ron tulipifera L.), sycamore-sweetgum (Platanus occidentalis L. - Liqu idambar styraciflua L.), black oak-hickory (Q. velutina Lam. - Carya s pp.), post oak (Q. stellata Wangenh.), and American beech (Fagus grand ifolia Ehrh.) communities. The classification system was validated wit h an independent data set. The eight communities were successfully ext rapolated to an unsampled portion of the CWMA. Clearly, community anal ysis can become an important facet in forest management and may play a major role where a holistic understanding of vegetative relationships is essential.