Site occupancy matrices, The River Ouse Project

The River Ouse Project was started by Dr Margaret Pilkington and colleagues in the Centre for Continuing Education, University of Sussex. Margaret is now retired with emeritus status and continues to run the project with a team of volunteers, in association with the University of Sussex. The team does botanical surveys of streamside grassland and steep wooded valleys (gills) in the upper reaches of the Sussex Ouse, a short flashy river arising on the southern slopes of the High Weald AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). Survey sites are chosen on the basis of species richness, potential for restoration and contribution to flood control, and surveyed using the sampling methods outlined in Rodwell, J S (1992. British Plant Communities, Volume 3, Grasslands and Montane Communities). Survey data are transferred from the paper record taken in the field to Excel spreadsheets, and from there after validation and cleaning into two MySQL (MariaDB) databases, meadows and gills.

The file is an extract from the meadows database. It contains binary data of the site occupancy for most of the plants encountered in meadow sites (stands, assemblies) sampled using five 2m x 2m quadrats. Details of the database are available here: River Ouse Project databases. 

For further details and access to the full database contact the author.