6.4.6 TransectsRecommended usesThere are a variety of different types of transect, each used for a different purpose. These are summarised in Part III, Section 10.1, Figure 10.1. For habitat monitoring, the most commonly used transects are line intercept transects, point intercept transects and belt transects. Other transect types are used for species monitoring and therefore may be required for monitoring species attributes of habitat features. Refer to Part III for details of these methods.A line intercept transect, sometimes called a ‘one-dimensional transect’, is used for making continuous observations along a line. The method consists of measuring the intercept of each plant along a line, which is usually placed on the ground, to give a measure related to the density of plants. For longer transects, plants are only recorded that touch the tape at standard distances (e.g. every 10 m) or randomly allocated distances along the transect. Alternatively, percentage cover can be estimated by measuring the length of transect line occupied by each species and using this to calculate the percentage of the length of the transect that is ‘covered’ by the species.A point intercept transect involves recording presence–absence of species at set points along the line. This can be used to estimate frequency. Line transects can be used to measure density by recording the perpendicular distance of plants from the transect line. For further information see Bonham (1989) and the discussion of distance sampling methods in Part III, Section 10.4.Belt transects are normally used to monitor changes in vegetation along a gradient or across a community boundary. They consist of frame quadrats of any size laid contiguously along the length of the transect. Cover, local frequency or other vegetation attributes can be estimated for each quadrat, and the variation in attibutes along the transect can be determined. This information can be compared between sampling occasions (for example, to see whether the extent of a plant community has changed).As for frame quadrats, transects may be permanent or temporary. For general monitoring purposesit is recommended that permanent transects are not used unless minimising sampling variation is of prime importance (see Section 6.4.2 or Part I, Section 2.3.2 for a detailed discussion). An exception to this is where belt transects are deliberately placed across vegetation boundaries, for example to monitor changes in the extent of an NVC community. In such situations, permanent transects provide a precise and efficient means of monitoring such changes, but steps should be taken to ensure that transects are, and remain, representative, and that sufficient transects are allocated to allow for lost samples. When randomising the location of fixed-length temporary transects, it is not necessary to randomise the direction of the transect; it is recommended that all transects lie in the same direction (Greenwood, 1996). However, it is important that all points within the study area are equally likely to be sampled. To achieve this, an area of one complete transect length surrounding the study area must be included when start points are selected (Part I, Section 2.3.3); parts of transects that fall outside the study area are ignored, but any fragment that falls within the study area should be surveyed.
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