Upcoming Events

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New England Botanical Club announces a free conference in June 2015 celebrating our 120th year. For details, select the Conference dropdown or click here.

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Dr. Patricia Swain
Natural Community Ecologist
Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program
Westborough, MA

Mark your calendar for the NEBC Meeting with Dr. Patricia Swain on February 6th, 6:45 PM.

 

"Revising the Classification of the Natural Communities of Massachusetts"

The talk will cover the basic ideas that went into creating a vegetation classification for biodiversity conservation in a state, and revising it 14 years later. The Classification of Natural Communities of Massachusetts was originally published in 2001. The goals involved in revising the classification remain those of the original: define all of the natural community types in the state in order to capture all aspects of biodiversity, so that examples of each can be protected. We and many colleagues doing vegetation surveys have added nc types over the years to those originally described. The upcoming revision will include those new types, with corresponding changes to previously existing types (subtractions, tightening of descriptions), and some added information that will assist in assignments to type. The new revision is intended to include a key, photographs, state distribution maps, information on ranking occurrences, and changes in state abundance ranks based on known occurrences in the NHESP database.