Abstract

Mapping Pre-settlement Plant Communities in Western NY from 1811 Surveys
Track: Conservation
Authors: Karl Korfmacher, Erin Pence, Elizabeth Hane, Evelyn Brister

General Land Office surveys from the early 19th century contain a wealth of information (soil quality, timber data, hydrology, etc.) about landscapes that have substantially changed over the past 200 years. Witness-tree data have been previously used to generally characterize pre-settlement forests, but detailed and segmented line descriptions from surveys from the 100,000 Acre Connecticut Tract in western New York provide an exceptional data set for landscape analyses. The segmented line descriptions provide a glimpse of the variability of plant communities in the area prior to clearing for agriculture by European settlers. Coordinates for this project were calculated from original survey notes, and ArcGIS tools were used to translate the points into lines depicting segmented transects walked in 1811. These points and line segments were then used to create continuous surfaces displaying the forested landscape along with the original streams and wetlands recorded in the surveys.