Badlands of western North Dakota/ ^^ and some of the results are 

 shown below. 



These figures, however, tend to obscure certain differences in the 

 vegetation, for Stipa had the same frequency in the virgin and in- 

 termittently used grasslands, but the abundance was greater in 

 the latter, thus making the index number higher in the latter. In- 

 tegrated index figures are often useful, but they cannot replace 

 the need for data on each characteristic separately. 



The description of a stand requires the inclusion of data on 

 frequency, which may be clearly shown in stand tables, such as 

 Table 3-1. These tables are indispensable in depicting the com- 

 position of a stand for the kinds of species, and their cover values 

 are listed according to groups such as shrubs or half-shrubs, 

 grasses, forbs, mosses, and lichens. The tables also give a good idea 

 of the pattern of distribution of all the species in the stand; for 

 example, in Table 3-1 it is immediately noticed that Loiseleuna 

 procumbens is not only the most abundant and dominant vascular 

 plant, but that it occurs in clumps for the cover ranges from 1 to 

 4, while a lesser degree of aggregation occurs in the other species. 

 On the whole this stand was fairly uniform because a number of 

 species have average frequencies above 80 per cent — as indicated 

 by the relative sparseness of blank spaces in the table. The table 

 also shows the occurrence of bare ground in various parts of the 

 stand, indicating the effect of adverse influences such as the 

 activity of rodents or grazing and trampling by reindeer. It 

 would have been desirable to give the cover of each species of 

 Uchen and moss separately, but time did not permit, and further- 



116 • THe Commixnity 



