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TOWN OF VICTOR Inventory of Land Use and Land Cover Prepared for: Ontario County Water Resources Council 20 Ontario Street, 3rd Floor Canandaigua, New York 14424 and Town of Victor 85 East Main Street Victor, New York 14564 Prepared by: Dr. Bruce Gilman Department of Environmental Conservation and Horticulture Finger Lakes Community College 3325 Marvin Sands Drive Canandaigua, New York 14424-8395 March 2014 Cover image: Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa (Michx.) Ell.) growing in a rich shrub fen plant community along Log Cabin Road, Town of Victor, New York. Acknowledgments: The Ontario County Planning Department has long supported a partnership between local towns and the Department of Environmental Conservation and Horticulture at Finger Lakes Community College that involves inventory and mapping of natural land cover and cultural land use. Previous reports have been completed for the Canandaigua Lake watershed, the Honeoye Lake watershed, and the woodlots, wetlands and riparian corridors in the Towns of Seneca, Phelps and Geneva. This report summarizes the latest land use/land cover study conducted in the Town of Victor. Terry Saxby, Ontario County Planning Department, is thanked for his assistance with landowner information, his patience as the fieldwork was slowly completed, and his noteworthy help transcribing the field maps to geographic information system (GIS) shape files. Sheri Norton, Ontario County Information Services, assisted with map production, shape file maintenance and data summaries. The format of this data will allow for easy retrieval, immediate use during project review, and it will create a template for future updating of the Town of Victor’s natural resources database, a vital component of their comprehensive plan. Funding for this work was provided through a special project grant from the Ontario County Water Resources Council, the water quality coordinating committee for the County. John Palomaki and P.J. Emerick have served as recent chairpersons for the Council and they are acknowledged for their leadership efforts in overseeing the Council’s activities and the special projects grant selection committee. I am also grateful to the many practicum students at the college that joined me on my fieldwork throughout the Town of Victor. And, of course, none of this would have been possible without the cooperation of numerous landowners I met along the way and who graciously gave permission to inventory the plant communities on their properties. Project Description: Brief History: Development in the Town of Victor contributes significantly to the economic growth of Ontario County but the domestication of the natural landscape has not been free of environmental concerns. To better understand the current status of the landscape, the Town sought technical assistance from the Ontario County Planning Department. Specifically, the Town requested detailed information on the nature, quality and connectivity among remaining natural communities. Such information could be incorporated into the latest rendition of the Town’s comprehensive plan, and might guide development decisions in the near future. Then County Planning Director Kris Hughes, being familiar with recent land use/land cover mapping initiatives in neighboring towns, contracted with Dr. Bruce Gilman, faculty member in the Department of Environmental Conservation and Horticulture at Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC), to conduct natural and cultural vegetation assessment in the Town of Victor. Current County Planning Director Tom Harvey encouraged the completion of the project by assigning Terry Saxby to the arduous task of creating the GIS land use/land cover overlay. Goals of the Study: Discussions among board members in the Town of Victor, staff at the Ontario County Planning Department, and Bruce Gilman at Finger Lakes Community College established the following goals: 1. Inventory the vegetation patterns in the Town of Victor. These patterns will include natural plant communities (land cover) and cultural plant communities (land use). All patterns will be ground-truthed except where property access was denied. For those exceptions, interpretation of Pictometry © images will be used to recognize vegetation and establish boundaries with neighboring features. Vegetation polygons as small as an approximate size of one acre will be inventoried. Linear patterns (e.g., hedgerows, intermittent stream) and point features (e.g., springs, cell towers) will not be mapped. 2. Using the classification hierarchy developed by the New York Natural Heritage Program (NYNHP), assign a community cover type name to the vegetation. Where vegetation is a complex mosaic of cover types, a combined cover type name (e.g., deep emergent marsh//floodplain forest) will be used. Four cover type names not found in the NYNHP classification manual, gravel mine (abandoned), sand mine (abandoned), outdoor recreation and parking area, will be used as cover type names in this inventory. 3. Create maps of the vegetation patterns in the Town of Victor using ESRI ArcView © geographic information system software. With Pictometry © images as the base map, shape files will be developed by heads-up digitizing in the County Planning Department. Quality control will be assured by using topology to remove inadvertent slivers in the shape files. All vegetation polygons will be color-coded and attributed with the NYNHP community cover type names. 4. Evaluate the ecological significance of natural plant communities in the Town of Victor. Using the global and state ranking approach described in the NYNHP classification manual, a local ranking will be developed to recognize special natural areas at the smaller scale of the Town of Victor. The design of the local ranking will incorporate rarity and frequency of occurrence, both derived from this inventory, into a numerical score ranging from 1 (locally rare) to 5 (locally secure). 5. Recommend opportunities to conserve remaining natural areas in the Town of Victor. Town officials will be encouraged to recognize special natural areas and include them in open space protection guidelines. Public and private landowners will be encouraged to reconnect fragmented natural areas through appropriate management strategies. Additional Activities: By request to the New York Natural Heritage Program, a review of their database for occurrences of rare plants, rare animals and significant natural communities in the Town of Victor will be conducted. Field checking sites described in these database records will be completed during this land use/land cover study. Results: Field data was summarized using the classification scheme and cover type categories found in the NYNHP classification manual, Ecological Communities of New York State (2002). This publication is the primary reference for plant community classification in the State. Its success and acceptance by a wide range of users is driven by its lofty goal to be an all-inclusive classification; it contains small to large natural communities as well as plant communities created by humans. Each community belongs to one of seven major systems. The systems are divided into two to five subsystems. Within each subsystem are many community cover types. Their characteristic species are described and their rarity and vulnerability are presented at a global and state scale. In this organized approach, significant natural communities can be designated as priorities for conservation thereby assuring that future generations can enjoy the full array of biological diversity found within New York State. The field inventories in the Town of Victor detected five major systems, ten subsystems and 39 community cover types. Fifteen combined cover types were also noted. The classification, frequency of occurrence (count) and total acreage for all cover types and combinations is presented in TABLE 1. Full community cover type descriptions and scientific study references are found in the APPENDIX. The NYNHP ranking system presented in TABLE 1 reflects an element’s rarity and vulnerability. An element may be a plant or animal species, or a natural community. The ranks carry no legal weight but are believed to accurately reflect their relative rarity. In our case, the global rank suggests the rarity of the community throughout the world while the state rank suggests the rarity within New York State. As new data become available, the ranks may be revised to reflect the most current information. The following explanations are used for elements ranked by the New York Natural Heritage Program: GLOBAL RANK G1 = critically imperiled globally because of extreme rarity (5 or fewer occurrences, or very few remaining acres, or miles of stream) or especially vulnerable to extinction because of some factor of its biology. G2 = imperiled globally because of rarity (6-20 occurrences, or few remaining acres, or miles of stream) or very vulnerable to extinction throughout its range because of other factors. G3 = either rare and local throughout its range (21-100 occurrences), or found locally (even abundantly at some of its locations) in a restricted range, or vulnerable to extinction throughout its range because of other factors. G4 = apparently secure globally, though it may be quite rare in parts of its range, especially at the periphery G5 = demonstrably secure globally, though it may be quite rare in parts of its range, especially at the periphery GH = historically known, with the expectation that it might be rediscovered GX = species believed