1. BIOLOGY 2404a 2009 Lecture 4
Vegetation sampling

2. 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

3. Sampling Strategies

4. Sampling Strategies II
Points
Plots
Line-intercept
Point-quarter

5. More about sampling
See VegSampling.pdf (also posted to WebCT)
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

6. Sampling Output Species Rel Freq Rel % cover Rel Biomass I.V. SpeciesA
0.4
0.2
0.27
SpeciesB
SpeciesC
0.1
0.13
SpeciesD
0.10
SpeciesE
0.23
Total
1.0

7. 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

8. Calculating Shannon Diversity
Location --> X Y
Species pi
(a)
lnpi
(b)
a*b A
0.2
-1.61
-0.32
0.9
-0.11
-0.09 B
0.03
-3.51 C D
0.02
-3.91
-0.08 E
TOTAL
1.0
s=5
-0.46
H’ = - ∑pi*lnpi
1.61
0.46