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Searching for a Model for Use in Vegetation Analysis

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Classification and Ordination

Part of the book series: Advances in vegetation science ((AIVS,volume 2))

Abstract

Current methods of indirect vegetation analysis either explicitly or implicitly assume a certain ecological model of how vegetation responds to environment. Indirect or vegetational ordination methods; (Whittaker 1978) including the more recent methods; of reciprocal averaging (Hill 1973), multidimensional scaling (Fasham 1977, Prentice 1977), PARAMAP (Noy-Meir 1974), and Gaussian ordination (Gauch et al. 1974; Ihm & van Groenewoud 1975) appear sensitive to small changes in the generating model (Austin 1976a, b). These indirect methods are multivariate exploratory data analysis techniques (Noy-Meir 1971, see also Tukey 1977) whose purpose is to expose the unknown ecological dimensions associated with floristic variation; their efficacy depends on the relevance of their model of the vegetation/environment relationship (Austin 1976a, Whittaker 1978). Testing their effectiveness with artificial data sets is entirely dependent on the appropriateness of the model used to generate the artificial data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Land Use Research, Institute of Earth Resources, CSIRO, P.O. Box 1666, Canberra City, 2601, A.C.T., Australia

    M. P. Austin

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  1. M. P. Austin
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Eddy van der Maarel

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© 1980 Dr. W. Junk bv Publishers, The Hague

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Austin, M.P. (1980). Searching for a Model for Use in Vegetation Analysis. In: van der Maarel, E. (eds) Classification and Ordination. Advances in vegetation science, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9197-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9197-2_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-009-9199-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-9197-2

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