Comparison of Distance-Measurement Techniques for Sampling Tussock Grassland Species in New Zealand
Laycock WA and Batcheler CL. 1975. Comparison of Distance-Measurement Techniques for Sampling Tussock Grassland Species in New Zealand. Journal of Range Management. 28(3):235-239
Four distance-measurement techniques were tested in 1969 near the Craigieburn Research Station of the Forest and Range Experiment Station, New Zealand Forest Service. Two methods (closet individual and point-centered-quarter) are known to result in biased estimates of density in nonramdom plant populations, and the other two methods (angle-order and corrected-point-distance method resulted in estimates within 20% of actual density for all population, and appeared to be the most promising measurement method tested. The closest individual and point-centered-quarter methods gave badly biased (low) estiamtes of aggregated populations. Reasonably good estimates for some poplations were obtained by the angle-order method, but it is time consuming. All methods appear to need additional theoretical work.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Laycock, W; Batcheler, C
- Units
- SODN
- Keywords
- closet, Craigieburn Research Station, distance-measurement, individual, New Zealand, point-centered-quarter