Expert system for automatic classification of European bog vegetation plots

EUR_OXY_SPH_Expert_system_file is an expert system for automatic classification of European bog vegetation plots of Oxycocco-Sphagnetea class. The expert system allows classification of new vegetation plots to a hierarchical phytosociological system of syntaxa, a class (Oxycocco-Sphagnetea), orders (Erico-Ledetalia, Sphagnetalia medii), and alliances (Erico mackaianae-Sphagnion papillosi, Ericion tetralicis, Oxycocco-Ericion tetralicis, Sphagnion medii, Oxycocco microcarpi-Empetrion hermaphroditi, Rubo chamaemori-Dicranion elongati).

The class is defined on the basis of the ratio between the sum of square-root transformed percentage covers of 'Bog species' (groups ##D +01 Bog-diagnostic-vascular, ##D +02 Bog-diagnostic-bryophytes), and the sum of square-root transformed percentage covers of species occurring in bog hollows and species occurring out of the bog habitat (groups ##D +01 Vascular_negative, ##D +02 Bryophytes_negative).

For classification of a plot to an alliance, the conditions for class and order must be fulfilled, and additionally, the plot must contain a greater proportion of discriminating species group of a certain alliance than that of other alliances of the same order. Each of the three conditions must be fulfilled independently. In addition, the presence of a minimum number of diagnostic species might be required in the definition of alliances. If the discriminating species groups of the orders have the same representation in a plot or the discriminating species are absent, this plot is classified only at the class level. Similarly, if the discriminating species groups of different alliances have the same representation in a plot or the discriminating species are absent, this plot is classified only at the order level. The use of discriminating species groups excludes the possibility of classifying a vegetation-plot record in more than one group at the same hierarchical level.

The principles of the expert system follow the methods described by Chytrý et al. (2020) 

The classification of a set of vegetation plots can be run in the JUICE program (Tichý 2002; https://www.sci.muni.cz/botany/juice/), TURBOVEG 3 program (Hennekens 2015) and an R script developed by H. Bruelheide et al. (submitted).