BIOLOGY 2404 a 2009 Lecture 4 Vegetation sampling

BIOLOGY 2404 a 2009 Lecture 4 • Vegetation sampling

Sampling Flora and Vegetation • Sampling flora = plant collecting, making a list that is ideally as complete as possible of all species in an area. – May also indicate relative abundance of each species • Sampling vegetation = taking some measures of the plant community. – Species composition, and their relative abundance – Dominance (% cover, biomass, wood, …) – Form • Sample versus Census

Sampling Strategies

Sampling Strategies II Points Line-intercept Plots Point-quarter

More about sampling • See https: //instruct. uwo. ca/biology/2404 a/ Veg. Sampling. pdf (also posted to Web. CT) • We won’t be doing all these techniques in this class (come on a field course to learn them in practice) • You should know the basics of the methods and statistics available, and what they are good for

Sampling Output Species Rel Freq 0. 4 Rel % cover 0. 2 Rel Biomass 0. 2 Species. A I. V. 0. 27 Species. B 0. 2 0. 4 0. 27 Species. C 0. 2 0. 13 Species. D 0. 10 Species. E 0. 1 0. 4 0. 23 Total 1. 0

Community Measures: diversity, richness, evenness • Diversity is a measure of the number of different species (or genetic variation) in a community, combined with the relative abundance of the different types; it is a blend of richness and evenness H’ = - ∑pi*lnpi • Richness (s) is a count of different species • Evenness (E) is a measure of the relative abundance of the different species

Calculating Shannon Diversity Location --> Species A B C D E TOTAL pi (a) 0. 2 0. 2 1. 0 H’ = - ∑pi*lnpi X lnpi (b) -1. 61 s=5 a*b -0. 32 -1. 61 pi (a) 0. 9 0. 03 0. 02 1. 0 Y lnpi (b) -0. 11 -3. 51 -3. 91 s=5 a*b -0. 09 -0. 11 -0. 08 -0. 46