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A Comparison of Cover Pole With Standard Vegetation Monitoring Methods
Author(s) -
DAVID TOLEDO P.,
HERRICK JEFFREY E.,
ABBOTT LAURIE B.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the journal of wildlife management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.94
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1937-2817
pISSN - 0022-541X
DOI - 10.2193/2009-136
Subject(s) - vegetation (pathology) , vegetation cover , wildlife , habitat , environmental science , cover (algebra) , plant cover , point (geometry) , remote sensing , hydrology (agriculture) , physical geography , soil science , ecology , geography , geology , mathematics , land use , geotechnical engineering , engineering , biology , medicine , mechanical engineering , pathology , geometry , species richness
The ability of resource managers to make informed decisions regarding wildlife habitat could be improved with the use of existing data sets and the use of cost‐effective, standardized methods to simultaneously quantify vertical and horizontal cover. We characterized vegetation structure of 3 semiarid plant communities to compare cover pole measurements, standard measurements of vegetation cover, composition, height, and the proportion of the soil surface exposed by large intercanopy gaps. We propose that a more versatile and interpretable description of wildlife habitat can be generated using a line‐point intercept method together with measurements of vegetation height and the proportion of the soil surface exposed by large intercanopy gaps.