The "Ideal" Ordination Method

The "Ideal" ordination method does not exist, but if it did it would possess the following qualities.

It recovers gradients without distortion.
If clusters exist in nature, this should be obvious in the ordination.
It does not produce clusters which do not exist.
It gives the same result every time for a given data set.
There is a unique solution.
Ecological similarity is related to proximity in ordination space.
Scaling of axes is related to beta diversity.
The method is not sensitive to noise.
"Signal" and "Noise" are easily separated.
You do not need to pre-specify number of axes.
The solution is the same, no matter how many dimensions one chooses to look at.
Unless by choice, all sites/stands/quadrats are treated equally.
The solution does not take much computer time.
The method is robust: it works well for short and for long gradients, for low and high noise, for sparse and full matrices, for big and for small data sets, for species-rich and species-poor systems.
For the mathematician: elegant.
For the ecologist: available, inexpensive, and easy to understand.

This page was created and is maintained by Michael Palmer.