Ordinaatiometodeja

Ordinaatiometodeja, often translated as "ordination methods" in English, refers to a suite of statistical techniques used in ecology and other fields to analyze multivariate data. The primary goal of ordination is to represent complex relationships between many variables (e.g., species abundance across multiple sites) in a lower-dimensional space, typically a two-dimensional graph. This visualization helps researchers identify patterns, gradients, and underlying structures within the data that might not be apparent otherwise.

Common ordination methods include Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS), and Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA). PCA is an eigenvector-based method that identifies linear combinations of the original variables that explain the most variance. NMDS, on the other hand, is a non-linear method that aims to preserve the ranked order of distances between samples, making it robust to non-normal data. CCA is a constrained ordination technique that directly relates species composition to measured environmental variables.

These methods are widely applied to understand community ecology, where they can reveal relationships between species distributions and environmental factors like soil type, temperature, or pollution levels. By plotting sites or species along the ordination axes, ecologists can infer gradients of environmental change or identify distinct community types. The interpretation of ordination plots relies on understanding the contribution of original variables to the new axes and the spatial arrangement of the data points.