Implementation of Desktop Review Protocol for Historic Plant Element Occurrences

Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program botanists at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy developed a statewide botany inventory plan that identified sites and grouped them into four different prioritization tiers. These tiers of sites are used to guide botany fieldwork that updates the element occurrences (EOs) of rare plant species. The bulk of those sites are considered Tier 3 sites of which, there are 866 that have at least an S1 and/or S2 ranked species. Within that subset there 228 sites with EOs that are 25 years or older since the last survey date. To achieve updated statues for these low priority EOs, PNHP botanists developed a Desktop Review Tool (DRT) to facilitate rapid assessments of these EOs. This project tested the ability of this DRT to review and provide updated statues for 110 EOs across 73 plant species that have an S1 conservation rank and were 25 years or older since last survey. DRT was successful in assessing 92% of the 110 EOs, with only 8% with errors preventing the use of the DRT. Most the 100 assessments completed for this project require a field visit to confirm the presence of the EOs providing a set of fieldwork targets over the next 5 years that can be incorporated into the statewide Botany Inventory Strategy.

WRCP

WRCP-22405

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2022

2025

02/03/2025

Western Pennsylvania Conservancy

Schuette, S., J. McPherson, and R. Goad. 2025. Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program. Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Implementation of a Desktop Review Protocol for Historic Plant Element Occurrences. WRCP-22405