Scale Considerations
The area or landscape of interest may be of very different sizes in different situations, and no consensus has been reached on what spatial scales are appropriate to quantify gamma diversity. It has therefore been proposed that the definition of gamma diversity does not need to be tied to a specific spatial scale, but gamma diversity can be measured for an existing dataset at any scale of interest. If results are extrapolated beyond the actual observations, it needs to be taken into account that the species diversity in the dataset generally gives an underestimation of the species diversity in a larger area. The smaller the available sample in relation to the area of interest, the more species that actually exist in the area are not found in the sample. The degree of underestimation can be estimated from a species-area curve.
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“The poet is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)