Canaveral Vegetation, 2022: A First Baseline for Florida’s Upland Woods and Shrublands

Plants shape how an ecosystem works, feed and shelter wildlife, and are usually what draws people outdoors in the first place. To track how park vegetation changes, and what stresses it, the Park Service's Southeast Coast Network monitors permanent plots across its parks, following a peer-reviewed protocol modeled on the Carolina Vegetation Survey. In 2022 it ran that protocol at Canaveral National Seashore for the first time, setting a baseline.

Vegetation plots established in April 2022. Credit: National Park Service.

The park

Canaveral National Seashore covers close to 24,000 hectares (59,000 acres) on Florida's Atlantic coast, running 39 kilometers (24 miles) from New Smyrna Beach to Titusville. Congress created it in 1975, including land that had been part of John F. Kennedy Space Center and Apollo Beach State Park.

Its plant communities are typical of Florida's Atlantic coast:

• grass-dominated coastal dunes;
• coastal strand and scrub of shrubs and low trees;
• coastal and mesic hammocks dominated by live oak (Quercus virginiana) or cabbage palmetto (Sabal palmetto);
• open pine flatwoods;
• hardwood swamps;
• tidal and non-tidal marshes of grasses and grass-like plants or mangroves.

In April 2022, 14 plots were set up in two subunits, Apollo Beach and Oak Hill, in two habitats: upland open woodlands and upland forests and shrublands.

What shapes the vegetation

Tides, steady ocean winds and river sediment strongly shape the park's plant communities, and strong storms and very salty conditions govern where plants grow across its mosaic of marsh, forest, shrubland and open upland. Soil conditions, water and disturbances such as fire and storms drive diversity.

• Upland open woodlands at Oak Hill sat on flat ground with acidic soil. Their main threat was the absence of fire, a natural process that helps trees regenerate and raises biodiversity.
• Upland forests and shrublands varied widely; plots with more alkaline soil lay on sites with many shell deposits mixed into the soil.

What they found

• 176 plant species, seven of them not found in earlier surveys.
• Species per plot: 18–34 in open woodlands, 19–63 in forests and shrublands. Diversity was highest among trees in both.
• Two plants listed as endangered by Florida: hand fern (Cheiroglossa palmata) and Atlantic Coast Florida lantana (Lantana depressa var. floridana).
• Dominant trees: slash pine (Pinus elliottii) or South Florida slash pine (Pinus densa) and sand live oak (Quercus geminata) in open woodlands; cabbage palmetto and live oak in forests and shrublands, alongside 11 other tree-sized species.
• Invasives: non-native plants were common in forest and shrubland plots, including four species ranked invasive by the Florida Invasive Species Council. Brazilian peppertree (Schinus terebinthifolia) grew in 60% of those plots and was among the dominant woody seedlings.

Average species richness (± standard deviation) by growth form and habitat. Credit: National Park Service.

Mean occurrence of native versus non-native species by habitat. Credit: National Park Service.

All plots are scheduled to be resampled in spring and summer 2026. The full data summary is available.

Sources

Based on "Terrestrial Vegetation Monitoring 2022 Data Summary for Canaveral National Seashore," Southeast Coast Network, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.