The plant communities of thirteen salt marshes along the coast of British Columbia are described and mapped, and a literature review on salt marsh ecological studies along the Pacific coast of North America is presented.
Coastal marshes in B.C. were compared based on plant species composition. The plant communities of the northern B.C. marshes in this study were similar to southern B.C. marshes (excluding the Fraser River marshes) except that they lacked Distichlis spicata and Grindelia integrifolia as dominant species. The plant communities on the Queen Charlotte Islands and northern mainland differed slightly from each other and from those on northern Vancouver Island.
Multivariate methods of analysis (principal components analysis, canonical correlation analysis and multivariate analysis of variance) applied to the field data indicated that vegetation - elevation relationships in the marshes ranged from strong to weak. Also, although elevation was important, factors other than elevation were mainly related to plant community patterns in the marshes. Most species were located throughout the marshes (e.g. Carex lyngbyei, Deschampsia cespitosa, Potentilla anserina and Triglochin maritimum ) while others (e.g. Elymus mollis ) showed restricted distributions with respect to elevation.
Using multivariate analysis of variance, the plant community classifications derived subjectively in the field for management purposes (based on aerial photographs and principal components analysis) were found to explain most ( > 84% ) of the variation in the vegetation data. A comparison between the classification developed in this study and that used by the British Columbia Ministry of Environment suggested that the Ministry of Environment classification could be improved by further subdividing on the basis of salinity.
At the Yakoun and Dala marshes, various ordination methods (principal components analysis, principal coordinates analysis, reciprocal averaging and detrended correspondence analysis) as well as cluster analysis were compared for their ability to identify the plant communities and to summarize variation in the data. Detrended correspondence analysis was the only method that distinguished all the plant communities recognized in the field. However, the first three axes only explained a small amount of the variation in the vegetation data. Principal components analysis using quantitative data and a covariance matrix, and principal coordinates analysis using quantitative data accounted for twice as much variation in the data and identified three out of four communities.
A detailed study of soils - vegetation - elevation relationships at the Yakoun and Dala marshes showed that weak relationships existed between elevation and soils variables but all soils variables were important in accounting for the variation in the vegetation data. / Science, Faculty of / Botany, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/25854 |
| Date | January 1986 |
| Creators | Campbell, Alison |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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