Ground-truth vegetation data from Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge islands, Oregon, U.S.A., 2024

We collected field-based vegetation data during the summer of 2024 on six islands within the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex, Oregon, U.S.A.: Goat Island, Hunters Island, North Crook Point Rock, Saddle Rock, Whaleshead Cove East Rock, and Whaleshead Cove West Rock. Data were collected by Oregon State University in collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to characterize native and invasive vegetation communities and support the development of remote sensing-based land cover classifications. Sampling locations were randomly generated across study islands and surveyed in the field using a Trimble Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) Global Positioning System (GPS). At each georeferenced location, vegetation characteristics were recorded and assigned to the vegetation community classes. The dataset includes geographic coordinates, island identifiers, and vegetation classifications. These field observations were used to train and validate a Random Forest model applied to high-resolution aerial imagery for mapping vegetation communities across refuge islands.