APOSTLE ISLAND NATIONAL LAKESHORE VEGETATION COVERAGE 
-- A GIS FRAMEWORK 
Hong S. He and Stephen J. Ventura 
Land Information and Computer Graphics Facility 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 53706 
ABSTRACT 
A complete GIS-based vegetation coverage was created for the Apostle Islands National 
Lakeshore, Wisconsin. This coverage integrated previous studies on vegetation with new data from 
a recent floral inventory, air photo interpretation, and other GIS layers such as soils, hydrography, 
and digital elevation models. Species composition, as defined by overstory tree species, was used 
as the spatial unit for vegetation classification. 
OVERVIEW 
During the last two decades, numerous studies 
have used GIS to map vegetation (Kuchler and 
Zonneveld 1988; Krummel 1987). Vegetation in 
the form of land cover or land type (Gustafson 
and Parker, 1992) has become one of the most 
essential data layer in GIS (Ripple, 1994). A 
digital vegetation layer in GIS is more efficient 
both for comparison with other environmental 
factors or for quantitative inventory of amount 
and size distribution of vegetation patches, and 
for single to multi-purpose vegetation mapping 
(DeMers, 1991). Recent studies have used using 
GIS functionality to simulate vegetation 
distributions (Davis and Geotz, 1990) as well as 
vegetation based land types, landscape patterns 
(Boumans and Sklar, 1990; Turner ef al., 1989; 
Mladenoff ef al., 1993). Many studies in this 
field are using GIS to analyze vegetation 
changes (Iverson and Risser, 1987), species 
distribution (Miller et a/. 1988), or landscape 
pattern (Pastor and Broschart, 1990; Mladenoff 
and Host, 1994). The objective of this paper is to 
present our efforts to create a GIS-based 
vegetation coverage for the Apostle Island 
National Lakeshore ( Figure 1) that can be used 
for multiple management and research 
applications. 
The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore consists 
of 21 islands lying off the northern tip of 
Wisconsin in Lake Superior and an eighteen 
mile long mainland unit in one mile width. Due 
to their historical and ecological importance, 
these 22 units, comprising about 42,500 acres, 
59 
were designated by the Congress in the 1970s as 
a National Lakeshore. During the last two 
decades, a variety of environmental and resource 
inventories have been conducted on many of the 
islands. The inventories covered flora, fauna, 
geology and soils (Anderson et a/., 1979, 1980, 
1982, 1983; Brander et al., 1978; Judziewicz 
and Koch, 1992; Judziewicz, 1993; Kotar et al., 
1992). Plant research has produced some of the 
most complete and detailed data sets. By 1993, 
803 species and hybrids representing one-third 
of Wisconsin's flora had been recorded, and a 
flora database recording plant species and 
location labels had been established (Judziewicz 
and Koch, 1992). To meet future management 
goals, a complete vegetation coverage was 
among the top priorities of the National Park 
Service. 
  
Figure 1 Geographical Location of AINL 
We incorporated a recent plant inventory and 
current mapping tasks into a GIS framework to 
establish a vegetation coverage (Ventura and