Dear friends,
How would you deal with the following problem, which I am faced with? I
have data on the basal area (an indirect measure of biomass) of a dominant
conifer in 37 souther Brazilian forests. I want to split those forests in
groups, since I will use the conifer's basal area as an indirect measure of
forest conservation (originally the conifer was abundant in all 37 forests, but
severe logging reduced it drastically in several of them). Put in ascending
order, the sites present a range of abundances.
Data come from plots of 1 ha (100 m x 100 m) or 0.1 ha (10 m x 100 m), in
the latter case data on basal area has been scaled to one hectare. More
complicated analyis as floristic similarity should use conifer basal area as a
proxy or an explicative resource, tentatively.
I am considering using classification analysis to split the groups, based
on a distance matrix built on the differences in basal area between plots
(forests).
What do you think? If you agree with that, which classification method
would you use in this case?
Thanks in advance for any contributions,
All the best,
Alexandre
Dr. Alexandre F. Souza
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia: Diversidade e Manejo da Vida Silvestre
Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS)
Av. UNISINOS 950 - C.P. 275, São Leopoldo 93022-000, RS - Brasil
Telefone: (051)3590-8477 ramal 1263
Skype: alexfadigas
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.unisinos.br/laboratorios/lecopop
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