Technical Notes: Evaluation of the Dry-Weight-Rank Method for Determining Species Composition in Tallgrass Prairie

Abstract

The dry-weight-rank (DWR) method for determining species composition of tallgrass prairie vegetation was compared to hand clipping. Species composition estimates for the 2 methods were similar in 3 of 4 trials when true ranking and previously published multipliers were used. Weighting the DWR estimates by plot total weight did not consistently improve the accuracy of the method. Observer errors reduced the accuracy of DWR, emphasizing the need for observer training. DWR estimates were generally less precise than hand clipped estimates for a given sample size but the speed of DWR would allow more samples to be taken resulting in more precise estimates in practice.