Abstract
Environmental gradients, represented by mapped physical environmental variables within a GIS, were classified and used to allocate a two-stage random stratified sample for field survey of vegetation in the Mojave Desert Ecoregion, California. The first-stage sample was allocated randomly and with unequal proportions among 129 environmental classes defined by the intersection of climate and geology digital maps at 1 km resolution. The second-stage sample was selected for each 1 km cell in the primary sample by defining six terrain classes related to desert vegetation patterns and randomly locating one plot location per class per cell. The total number of observations (1133) was determined by the resources available for the survey. This approach allowed the vegetation survey to be planned efficiently, alternate samples to be located, and vegetation types to be defined quantitatively. The sample allocated surveyed broad scale environmental gradients effectively, and the objective of oversampling rare environmental classes and undersampling common classes was achieved in most cases. It did not succeed, however, in capturing replicates of rarer plant alliances. We suggest sampling efforts should be weighted even more heavily toward rare environments and plant communities for this objective.
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Franklin, J. et al. (2001). Stratified Sampling for Field Survey of Environmental Gradients in the Mojave Desert Ecoregion. In: Millington, A.C., Walsh, S.J., Osborne, P.E. (eds) GIS and Remote Sensing Applications in Biogeography and Ecology. The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science, vol 626. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1523-4_14
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