Abstract
When a new relevé is to be assigned to a pre-existing type, its composition is compared with an association table. Bayesian inference may seem a good way to make the comparison, but presents difficulties. In an alternative approach, three indices of goodness-of-fit are proposed. Compositional satisfaction is a measure of how well the species composition of the relevé fits the constancy classes in the table; it is a minor modification of the Czekanowski coefficient of similarity between observed and expected numbers of species in each constancy class. Dominance satisfaction is a modification of the Czekanowski similarity between the relevé and cover values that might be expected from the association table. Dominance constancy is a weighted mean of the constancy class of the four most abundant species in the relevé. A computer program, TABLEFIT, combines them into a single index. It has been tested on British mire vegetation.
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Hill, M.O. Computerized matching of relevés and association tables, with an application to the British National Vegetation Classification. Vegetatio 83, 187–194 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00031691
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00031691