Developing Digital Vegetation for Central Hardwood Forest Types: A Case Study from Leslie County, KY

Digital vegetation is the computerized representation, with either virtual images or animations, of vegetation types and conditions based on current measurements or ecological models. Digital vegetation can be useful in evaluating past, present, or future land use; changes in vegetation linked to climate change; or restoration eff orts. Digital vegetation can be spatially explicit at various scales: region, subregion, landscape, landtype, forest, or stand. Advances in computer technology allow us to build digital vegetation based on integrated environmental information (i.e., soils, topography, forest types, and vegetation composition).