This book provides sampling designs for measuring species richness and diversity, patterns of plant diversity, species-environment relationships, and species distributions in complex landscapes and natural ecosystems. Part I introduces the problem: plant diversity studies are difficult to design and conduct in part because of the history and baggage associated with the evolution of plant ecology into a quantitative science. Issues of scale, resolution, and extent must be effectively commandeered. Part II implores the practitioner to take an experimental approach to sampling plant diversity wit ... More

This book provides sampling designs for measuring species richness and diversity, patterns of plant diversity, species-environment relationships, and species distributions in complex landscapes and natural ecosystems. Part I introduces the problem: plant diversity studies are difficult to design and conduct in part because of the history and baggage associated with the evolution of plant ecology into a quantitative science. Issues of scale, resolution, and extent must be effectively commandeered. Part II implores the practitioner to take an experimental approach to sampling plant diversity with a clear understanding of advantages and disadvantages of single-scale and multi-scale techniques. Part III focuses on scaling plant diversity measurements from plots to landscapes. Part IV provides a brief introduction to modeling plant diversity in relation to environmental factors. Examples of common non-spatial (correlative) and spatial analyses are explained. Part V introduces the concept of measuring temporal changes in plant diversity at landscape scales and follows with a case study designed to collect the necessary baseline data to monitor plant diversity. Part VI discusses research needed to understand better changes in plant diversity in space and time. Specific objectives are to: (1) provide a basic understanding of the history of design considerations in past and modern vegetation field studies; (2) demonstrate with real-life case studies the use of single-scale and multi-scale sampling methods, and statistical and spatial analysis techniques that may be particularly helpful in measuring plant diversity at landscape scales; and (3) address several sampling questions typically asked by students and field ecologists.