Stillwater Sciences and URS were contracted by the California State Coastal Conservancy, with matching funding from the Santa Clara River Trustee Council, to produce a preliminary vegetation classification and current, detailed riparian vegetation map for the Santa Clara River mainstem (mouth to Ventura/Los Angeles County line) and major tributaries (Piru, Sespe, and Santa Paula creeks). The classification and vegetation mapping effort followed the State of California standard vegetation classification system developed under the auspices of the Vegetation Program of the California Native Plant Society and described in the first edition of A Manual of California Vegetation. A combination of field-based mapping and traditional aerial photography interpretation were used to produce the vegetation map within a GIS. A total of approximately 15,000 acres were mapped in the project area.

View the vegetation map using Google Earth

Google Earth allows anyone to view spatial data, including satellite imagery and aerial photography. To view the vegetation mapping data, download and install Google Earth, then download the vegetation mapping KMZ files below. Once you've downloaded the files, you can double-click the file, which will launch the Google Earth application. Note: the vegetation mapping polygons were derived from 2005 aerial photography; imagery in Google Earth is updated constantly, thus the polygon boundaries may not match exactly with imagery in Google Earth.

Vegetation mapping units: MapUnits.kmz (1.25MB)

Arundo percent cover: ArundoCover.kmz (520kb)

Tamarix locations: Tamarix.kmz (142kb)

Vegation alliances: Alliance_vegtypes.kmz (1.25MB)