Assessments

* NATURAL DIVERSITY DATABASE

* Terrestrial Vertebrates Restricted to the Sierra Nevada

Management Strategy

* SNEP Significant Areas Inventory

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Plant community types are often used as a coarse descriptor of biotic and underlying environmental conditions. Since 1986, Californias Natural Heritage Program has classified the states plant communities into roughly 400 community types, using the Natural Diversity Data Base (NDDB) Plant Community Classification System (recently the California Native Plant Society has devised an alternative classification system that serves a similar purpose). To be consistent with the statewide gap analysis of California, SNEP employed the NDDB system. Excluding marginal communities mainly distributed in the Mojave Desert and the Great Basin, the Sierra Nevada encompasses eighty-eight plant community types.
The Heritage Program ranks each community type, much as species are ranked, to indicate its overall condition throughout its range in the state. Geographically restricted community types listed as very threatened by the Natural Heritage Division include Gabbroic northern mixed chaparral and Ione chaparral. More widespread Sierran community types listed as very threatened or threatened include sagebrush steppe, Sierra Tehachapi saltbrush scrub, big tree forest, west-side ponderosa pine forest, and east-side ponderosa pine forest. Types listed as threatened that are widespread in the Sierra Nevada but also have wide occurrence elsewhere include aspen forest, aspen riparian forest, black oak woodland, blue oak woodland, valley oak woodland, interior live oak woodland, serpentine foothill pinechaparral woodland, wet or dry montane meadow, wet or dry subalpine meadow, and montane black cottonwood riparian forest.