Can vegetation be discretely classified in species-poor environments? Testing plant community concepts for vegetation monitoring on sub-Antarctic Marion Island.

ABSTRACT: The updating and rethinking of vegetation classifications is important for ecosystem monitoring in a rapidly changing world, where the distribution of vegetation is changing. The general assumption that discrete and persistent plant communities exist that can be monitored efficiently, is rarely tested before undertaking a classification. Marion Island (MI) is comprised of species-poor vegetation undergoing rapid environmental change. It presents a unique opportunity to test the ability to discretely classify species-poor vegetation with recently developed objective classification techniques and relate it to previous classifications. We classified vascular species data of 476 plots sampled across MI, using Ward hierarchical clustering, divisive analysis clustering, non-hierarchical kmeans a

SUBMITTER: van der Merwe S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9811060 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature