Suggested references for self-education
Very few universities have courses or workshops on ordination techniques. Therefore, most practitioners have to learn the techniques on their own. The following books are recommended for self-education. They are presented in order of increasing complexity, and mathematical background expected. Therefore, I recommend reading them in the following order! It is not necessary to go beyond the first few stages in order to start applying the methods. After reading the first few, you will be able to just skim the remaining, to find out what is unique in each. Although Gauch 1982 may seem a bit out of date, I still recommend it as an introduction to gradient analysis. It, more than any other work, ties in ecological theory with gradient analysis in an approachable way.
- *Lep, J., and P. milauer. 2003. Multivariate Analysis
of Ecological Data using Canoco. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
UK. AND/OR *McCune, B., and J. B. Grace. 2002. Analysis of Ecological
Communities. MjM Software Design, Gleneden
Beach, Oregon. These books have quite different flavors and
perspectives - reading both will either help understand
the field more thoroughly, or will cause more confusion. I
like both works, and all of the authors, but I agree more with the
approach of Lep, J., and P. milauer.
- Gauch, H. G., Jr. 1982.
Multivariate Analysis in Community Structure. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge AND/OR Causton, D. R. 1988. An
introduction to vegetation analysis. Unwin
Hyman, London. AND/OR *Kent, M., and P. Coker. 1992. Vegetation
description and analysis: a practical approach. Belhaven Press, London.
- Pielou, E. C. 1984. The
Interpretation of Ecological Data: A Primer on Classification and
Ordination. Wiley, New York AND/OR *Økland, R. H. 1990. Vegetation ecology: theory,
methods and applications with reference to Fennoscandia.
Sommerfeltia Supplement 1:1-233.
- *ter Braak, C. J. F., and I. C. Prentice. 1988. A
theory of gradient analysis. Adv. Ecol. Res. 18:271-313.
- *Jongman, R. H. G., C. J. F. ter Braak, and O. F. R.
van Tongeren, editors. 1987. Data Analysis in
Community and Landscape Ecology. Pudoc,
Wageningen, The Netherlands. (Now available in a
1995 edition by Cambridge University Press) AND/OR Digby, P. G. N., and R. A. Kempton. 1987. Population
and Community Biology Series: Multivariate Analysis of Ecological
Communities. Chapman and Hall, London.
The
following two books are indispensible references. The first one has a
thorough coverage of multivariate methods, time-series, and spatial analysis,
as applied in ecology. The second is not merely a manual, as the title
might imply. It gives the theoretical foundations behind the eigenanalysis-based ordination methods.
- *Legendre, P. and L. Legendre. 1998. Numerical Ecology.
2nd English edition. Elsevier, Amsterdam. 853 pages.
- *ter Braak, C. J. F., and P. Šmilauer.
1998. CANOCO Reference Manual and User's Guide to Canoco for Windows: Software
for Canonical Community Ordination (version 4). Microcomputer Power
(Ithaca, NY USA) 352 pp.
The
following reference is very good for Bray-Curtis (or Polar) Ordination, but
also has a good, accessible introduction to other methods. As you might expect
from the title, there is strong advocacy for one particular method.
- Beals, E. W. 1984.
Bray-Curtis ordination: an effective strategy for analysis of multivariate
ecological data. Adv. Ecol. Res. 14:1-55.
*
indicates that Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) is discussed.
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