Aerial photographs of the 3000 ha Caddo Lake State Park and Wildlife Management Area were used to map the park into 119 survey areas, each representing a distinct patch of vegetation.
This paper provides a quantitative description and gradient analysis of the wetland plant communities of Caddo Lake, focusing on the public lands of the Caddo Lake State Park and Wildlife Management Area.
Two transects, perpendicular to Cypress Bayou, were randomly located along a 1.5 km baseline in the Caddo Lake State Park and Wildlife Management Area.
Since a goal of this study was to survey and map the plant communities of the entire Caddo Lake State Park and Wildlife Management Area, a survey methodology was devised that would facilitate a rapid survey of the area, but still obtain data suitable for quantitative analysis.
Sites with high axis 2 scores were associated with steep slopes and narrow ravines near the Caddo Lake State Park campground and headquarters area while terraces and natural levees from higher portions of the Cypress Bayou floodplain had low scores.
This classification forms the basis for a map of the wetland vegetation of Caddo Lake State Park and Wildlife Management Area (Figure 7).
Table 1: Mean basal area ([m.sup.2]/ha) and absolute density (stems/ha, in parentheses) for each tree species > 10 cm dhh encountered in 29 plots along a transect from the Caddo Lake State Park and Wildlife Management Area.