Transformation of visually estimated cover (%) in a phytosociological survey to cover-abundance values
Source:R/phytosociological_cover_transformation.R
PhytoCover.RdSpecies cover visually estimated in a phytosociological survey are transformed to:
Braun-Blanquet cover-abundance scale (Braun-Blanquet,1932)
Van Der Maarel cover-abundance scale (Van Der Maarel, 1978)
Dominance percentage (Tasser and Tappeiner, 2005)
see @details
Arguments
- database
database with visually estimated cover of plant species. Rare species are added as '+". Rows are species and columns are surveys. The first column of the database reports the species names (Important: no space among words must exist). Database class must be data.frame
- method
"BrBl": transform cover visually estimated to the Braun-Blanquet cover-abundance scale (see @details )
"Maarel": transform cover visually estimated to the Van Der Maarel cover-abundance scale (see @details )
"TassTapp": transform cover visually estimated to dominance percentage according to Tasser and Tappeiner (2005) (see @details )
Details
Conversion table
| Visually estimated cover (%) | Braun Blanquet | Van Der Maarel | Tasser and Tappeiner |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| <1 | + | 2 | 0.3 |
| 1 - 5 | 1 | 3 | 2.8 |
| 6 -15 | 2a | 5 | 10 |
| 16-25 | 2b | 5 | 20.5 |
| 26-50 | 3 | 7 | 38 |
| 51-75 | 4 | 8 | 63 |
| 76-100 | 5 | 9 | 88 |
References
Braun-Blanquet J (1932) Plant sociology. The study of plant communi- ties. GD Fuller and HS Conard (Eds.). Authorized English translations of 'Pflanzensoziologie'. 1st ed. Printed in the United States of America. New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Co. Inc.
Van der Maarel, E. (1979). Transformation of cover-abundance values in phytosociology and its effects on community similarity. Vegetatio, 39(2), 97-114.
Tasser E, Tappeiner U (2005) New model to predict rooting in diverse plant community compositions. Ecological Modelling 185:195-211.