NASIS 2.0 to 3.x Plant Symbol and Name Conversion Issue

During conversion from NASIS 2.0 to NASIS 3.x plant symbols and plant names that are synonyms where converted to the official plant symbol and name. This results in the potential loss of correlated ecological significance’s of some plants and vegetative reports from NASIS only displaying the official plant name and not the synonym plant name.

During NASIS 3.1 beta testing, one of the test sites identified this as a major issue and concern that we would be providing clients with vegetative reports with only the official plant name and thus exposing soil survey to criticism for poor quality information. There are several bluegrass’s (POA) that the field identifies using their local Flora Key and correlates to a specific ecological sites. One example, bluegrass Poa nevadensis (PONE3) can occur on soils in riparian areas and has wetland information, but PONE3 is a synonym to POSE (Poa secunda) which occurs on upland soils and does not have wetland information.

It is a critical business need to be able to use the plant synonym symbol and name in NASIS tables and reports, in order to provide continued identification of ecological significant phenotypes, subspecies and varieties and to generate for users vegetation reports with the plant synonym name rather that the official plant name.

Method to correct plant synonym symbol converted to official plant symbol.

1. With an empty selected set, View-NASIS Site, highlight the row of your NASIS site and File-Load Related Local Plant table.
   
   
2. Run NASIS standard report “Duplicate Plant Symbols” to generate a list of duplicate plant symbols in your local plant table. Duplicate plant symbols indicate the possibility that there was a plant symbol synonym converted to an official plant symbol. Plant synonym symbols that are converted to official plant symbols will commonly appear as duplicates in the NASIS local plant table. However, each plant symbol is still linked to its original component. By finding out which symbol is linked to which component it is possibly to determine the original plant symbol.
   
   
3. In the Local Plant table uniquely identify the duplicate symbols, by adding 1,2,3, etc. to the end of the Local Plant Symbol and Local Plant Name. Example, POSE Sandberg bluegrass is duplicated in local plant table.

   POSE Sandberg bluegrass
   POSE Sandberg bluegrass
   POSE Sandberg bluegrass
   

   edit the records like the following;

   POSE1 Sandberg bluegrass 1
   POSE2 Sandberg bluegrass 2
   POSE3 Sandberg bluegrass 3
   

4. Save the edited Local Plant table. With the cursor in one of the POSE records do a load related Component Existing Plants to load those components that are linked to it.
   
   
5. Run NASIS report “Component Ecosystem Correlation List” to print the linked components, ecosystem name, and productivity. With this information and using resources such as, series descriptions, range site descriptions, original SSSD tables, or soil survey manuscripts it should be possible to determine the original plant symbol and plant name that should be used.
   
   
6. Edit the Local Plant table to correct the plant symbol back to its’ original symbol. Example if after reviewing the Component Ecosystem Correlation List, plant symbol POSE2 turned out to originally be PONE3 Nevada bluegrass for those components edit the Local Plant Symbol and Local Plant Name for POSE2 back to PONE3 Nevada bluegrass.
   
   
7. Empty your selected set (File-New) and repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 for the next POSE duplicated symbol. Repeat as necessary.