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Vegetation‐environment relationships in a Negev Desert erosion cirque
Author(s) -
Ward David,
OlsvigWhittaker Linda,
Lawes Michael
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of vegetation science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1654-1103
pISSN - 1100-9233
DOI - 10.2307/3235735
Subject(s) - edaphic , ordination , vegetation (pathology) , altitude (triangle) , ecology , species richness , deserts and xeric shrublands , geography , perennial plant , environmental science , physical geography , hydrology (agriculture) , forestry , geology , habitat , biology , soil water , mathematics , medicine , geometry , geotechnical engineering , pathology
Abstract The relationship of desert vegetation to topographic and edaphic factors in Makhtesh Ramon, an erosional cirque in the Negev Desert of Israel, was analyzed using redundancy analysis ordination. Altitude and geological substrate had the most significant correlations with vegetation patterns. In particular, significant and monotonic increases in both total species richness and the percentage of annual species were found with increasing altitude. A comparison was made of the effectiveness of Whittaker's diversity sampling plots (Shmida 1984) versus the log‐series survey method of McAuliffe (1990). We concluded that at small sample sizes, the Mc Auliffe plots were more likely to yield interpretable ordination results, even though they included only the perennial flora.