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Numerical Techniques For Classifying Forest Communities In The Tennessee Valley, Dennis Michael Mccarthy

Doctoral Dissertations

The main objectives of this study were:

1. To develop a series of vegetational classification systems based on the floristics of community strata, overstory structural functional features, and environmental parameter of a region typical of the temperate Tennessee Valley;

2. To examine the suitability of these classification systems for the complex forests of the Tennessee Valley;

3. To develop numerical tools for evaluating classification suitability;

4. To use these tools to seek out natural discontinuities in vegetational patterns.

To achieve these goals six multivariate cluster analysis programs were examined. Preliminary tests brought out undesirable properties in four of them, however, …