CANONICAL CORRESPONDENCE-ANALYSIS FOR FOREST SITE CLASSIFICATION - A CASE-STUDY

Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) is an exploratory statistical method that can be applied to the investigation of vegetation-environm ent relationships and to forest site classification studies. This pape r illustrates with a case study some of its advantages over other wide ly used methods - ecological profiles and correspondence analysis of s pecies abundance data: i) CCA is a global method adapted to the freque nt situation characterized by many species and several ecological vari ables; ii) it makes it possible to underscore the influence of the eco logical gradients leg, water and nutrient availability) on species dis tribution while eliminating undesirable side effects leg, the silvigen etic state of the stands); iii) it helps in selecting the ecological v ariables that are relevant for site classification; iv) it can be used to define synthetic indexes of the ecological optimum and amplitude o f plant species and thus to obtain information on good bioindicator sp ecies.