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Fuzzy logic for phytosociology

1. Syntaxa as vague concepts

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Abstract

This paper presents a logical description of the phytosociological typology. The vagueness of vegetation units, ascertained by many authors, has been explicated by means of formal tools developed by fuzzy set theory.

The vegetation typology has been presented as a linguistic variable community type (ct). A set of its linguistic values (ℐ ct ) contains names of syntaxa (as primary terms) and some compound terms.

According to the linguistic approach proposed, identification of a phytocoenose is based on its floristic composition and consists in the assigning the most appropriate term in to this phytocoenose. A procedure called linguistic approximation is therefore used.

The logical differences between taxa and syntaxa, and the application of the variable ct in expert systems have been discussed.

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Moraczewski, I.R. Fuzzy logic for phytosociology. Vegetatio 106, 1–11 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00044854

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