The Vegetation GIS Data System (VGS) is a free software application for recording and managing vegetation and other ecosystem or environmental sampling data. The application provides: 1) A data repository for organizing and managing data, photos, documents, positional coordinates and other information associated with an unlimited number of study sites or locations. 2) Electronic tools for recording data in the field (using tablet PCs) as well as historical data in the office. 3) Reports and tools for summary and presentation of results in the field or office. VGS meets the needs of both field personnel and administrative level managers. One reason for the success of VGS is that both office and field data entry forms are designed to fit specific combinations of sampling methods and forms in an efficient manner for a particular sampling protocol. The VGS software has been adopted for use by various government, university and private entities. It is widely used for vegetation inventories and monitoring, but is equally suited to a variety of ecosystem and environmental data requirements. Users can generate forms for recording data for their own protocols by specifying the combination and order of data entry modules that appear on the forms in either a single or multi-form format. Each data entry module automatically displays the appropriate input panel (species, categories, classes, numeric keypad, etc.) when the module is selected for input. In general, the entire screen is dedicated to one point, quadrat or other sampling unit at a time which greatly reduces input errors and user fatigue. We can develop and add data entry modules to support protocols where existing modules do not meet requirements. For vegetation data, VGS implements the USDA PLANTS Database for species input, but smaller template lists may be created by the user for species and categories.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.