Recoding and multidimensional analyses of vegetation data: A comparison

Two simulated coenoclines and a real data set were differently recoded with respect to the Braun-Blanquet coding (including presence/absence) and analysed through the most common multidimensional scaling methods. This way, we aim at contributing to the debate concerning the nature of the Braun-Blanquet coding and the consequent multidimensional scaling methods to be used. Procrustes, Pearson, and Spearman correlation matrices were computed to compare the resulting sets of coordinates and synthesized through their Principal Component Analyses (PCA). In general, both Procrustes and Pearson correlations showed high coherence of the obtained results, whereas Spearman correlation values were much lower. This proves that the main sources of variation are similarly identified by most of used methods/transformations, whereas less agreement results on the continuous variations along the detected gradients. The conclusion is that Correspondence Analysis on presence/absence data seems the most appropriate method to use. Indeed, presence/absence data are not affected by species cover estimation error and Simple Correspondence Analysis performs really well with this coding. As alternative, Multiple Correlation Analysis provides interesting information on the species distribution while showing a pattern of relevés very similar to that issued by PCA.