Is a historical vegetation map a useful predictor of dry season soil water fraction in seasonal ponds?

Maps of vegetation communities have been produced by ecological researchers for over a century, but the utility of these historical resources today is poorly understood or often overlooked in designing new studies and estimating environmental parameters across spatial scales. This study was based on a four-decade old map of dominant wetland vegetation species in seasonal ponds at Archbold Biological Station (ABS) on the Lake Wales Ridge, an ancient xeric ecosystem home to many endangered species in central Florida, USA. This map was used to design a study across four pond vegetation types at ABS, which collected shallow soil cores to measure soil water content and soil organic matter. These data were used to develop a mixed effects model of soil water fraction, which identified statistically significant trends in the soil water fraction gradient both within and between pond types in the vegetation classification system. This model demonstrates that the soil water fraction gradient indicated by the original pond classification system used in historical vegetation mapping at ABS is still prevalent today, highlighting the continued utility of this map's vegetation classification scheme in predicting spatial differences in environmental factors such as soil water fraction. Soil organic matter exhibited a statistically significant positive correlation with soil water fraction in the collected samples. These results show the utility of historical vegetation maps in predicting environmental variables today, and this study's approach using a historical map to design new data collection and modeling efforts can be implemented using other vegetation maps of different ecosystems.