The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions?
Mapping plant communities is core business for many geographers and conservation ecologists. However a troubling assumption underpins these maps and it frequently remains unexamined, despite almost a century of criticism. Are the communities real, discrete assemblages that can be expected to respond...
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ftunivtasecite:oai:ecite.utas.edu.au:70693 2023-05-15T17:09:55+02:00 The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions? Bricher, PK 2011 http://ecite.utas.edu.au/70693 en eng University of Tasmania Bricher, PK, The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions?, School of Geography & Environmental Studies Conference 2011, 28-29 June 2011, Hobart, pp. x-x. (2011) [Conference Extract] http://ecite.utas.edu.au/70693 Environmental Sciences Environmental Science and Management Conservation and Biodiversity Conference Extract NonPeerReviewed 2011 ftunivtasecite 2019-12-13T21:38:20Z Mapping plant communities is core business for many geographers and conservation ecologists. However a troubling assumption underpins these maps and it frequently remains unexamined, despite almost a century of criticism. Are the communities real, discrete assemblages that can be expected to respond to environmental change uniformly and therefore be treated as valis scientific units? Instability and ambiguity in community definitions pose serious problems when such maps are used to measure the ecological impacts of environmental change or management interventions.On Macquarie Island, researchers have historically defined plant communities in conflicting ways. Tall tussock vegetation on the coastal slopes might constitute a single community, ot three, or seven, or nine. We examined the capacity of statistical clustering tools to distinguish floristic communities on the basis of a large, stratified-random dataset, and the stability of the resulting clusters. We were unable to produce stable clusters and suggest that mapping individual species is more likely to be useful gor detecting changes in vegetation patterns. Conference Object Macquarie Island eCite UTAS (University of Tasmania) |
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English |
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Environmental Sciences Environmental Science and Management Conservation and Biodiversity |
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Environmental Sciences Environmental Science and Management Conservation and Biodiversity Bricher, PK The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions? |
topic_facet |
Environmental Sciences Environmental Science and Management Conservation and Biodiversity |
description |
Mapping plant communities is core business for many geographers and conservation ecologists. However a troubling assumption underpins these maps and it frequently remains unexamined, despite almost a century of criticism. Are the communities real, discrete assemblages that can be expected to respond to environmental change uniformly and therefore be treated as valis scientific units? Instability and ambiguity in community definitions pose serious problems when such maps are used to measure the ecological impacts of environmental change or management interventions.On Macquarie Island, researchers have historically defined plant communities in conflicting ways. Tall tussock vegetation on the coastal slopes might constitute a single community, ot three, or seven, or nine. We examined the capacity of statistical clustering tools to distinguish floristic communities on the basis of a large, stratified-random dataset, and the stability of the resulting clusters. We were unable to produce stable clusters and suggest that mapping individual species is more likely to be useful gor detecting changes in vegetation patterns. |
format |
Conference Object |
author |
Bricher, PK |
author_facet |
Bricher, PK |
author_sort |
Bricher, PK |
title |
The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions? |
title_short |
The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions? |
title_full |
The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions? |
title_fullStr |
The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions? |
title_full_unstemmed |
The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions? |
title_sort |
plant communities of macquarie island: mappable entities or pareidolic illusions? |
publisher |
University of Tasmania |
publishDate |
2011 |
url |
http://ecite.utas.edu.au/70693 |
genre |
Macquarie Island |
genre_facet |
Macquarie Island |
op_relation |
Bricher, PK, The plant communities of Macquarie Island: Mappable entities or pareidolic illusions?, School of Geography & Environmental Studies Conference 2011, 28-29 June 2011, Hobart, pp. x-x. (2011) [Conference Extract] http://ecite.utas.edu.au/70693 |
_version_ |
1766066281874718720 |