Vegetation cover types of the North Cascades

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The North Cascades National Park Service Complex in north-central Washington contains a wide variety of plant communities. The crest of the Cascade Mountains passes through the park, but the range is so wide in this area that it creates a rain shadow west of the crest. The Skagit River valley passes trough this area and provides a low elevation habitat more characteristic of dry interior forest than coastal forests. In the southern portion of the park complex, which is east of the Cascade crest, a similar, more typical Cascade rainshadow effect exists. The result is a vegetation mosaic that contains typical "westside" vegetation elements, typical "eastside" vegetation elements, and some hybrid mixtures of "eastside-westside" vegetation that are rarely found elsewhere in the Cascade Mountains. Although a substantial body of literature has been developed for the vegetation in and around the park complex, the cover type map for the park is 50 years old and is oriented to commercial forest uses because the area was national forest at that time. During 1983-1985, a new vegetation map and fuels maps were produced using Landsat satellite data, associated terrain and precipitation data available in digitized format, and ground information. This report is a summary of the vegetation data to accompany the cover type map.

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Reference Code: U85AGE01IDUS

Full Citation: Agee, J. K. and J. Kertis. 1986. Vegetation cover types of the North Cascades. Report CPSU/UW 86-2. National Park Service, Cooperative Park Studies Unit, College of Forest Resources, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. 64 pp. plus map.

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