Towards monitoring biodiversity in Amazonian forests: how regular samples capture meso-scale altitudinal variation in 25 km2 plots.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Ecological monitoring and sampling optima are context and location specific. Novel applications (e.g. biodiversity monitoring for environmental service payments) call for renewed efforts to establish reliable and robust monitoring in biodiversity rich areas. As there is little information on the distribution of biodiversity across the Amazon basin, we used altitude as a proxy for biological variables to test whether meso-scale variation can be adequately represented by different sample sizes in a standardized, regular-coverage sampling arrangement.

Methodology/principal findings

We used Shuttle-Radar-Topography-Mission digital elevation values to evaluate if the regular sampling arrangement in standard RAPELD (rapid assessments ("RAP") over the long-term (LTER ["P

SUBMITTER: Norris D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4149511 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature