The use of information technologies in determining the total and partial projective coverage of bryophytes

We analyzed the existing methods of determining the abundance of plant species of the living ground cover in the biocenosis and selected the most effective methods for determining bryophyte abundance. Special attention was paid to the use of modern information technologies for full or partial automation of determining the total and partial projective cover of the living ground cover. In our work, we investigated the possibility of using graphics editors having a graphics processing module with the function of auto-extraction, vectorizer programs, CAD computer-aided design systems, which showed good results for accuracy and efficiency of work. Currently, there is no single high-quality specialized program for complete automation of photo plots processing and determination of projective coverage. It is currently impossible to obtain reliable data without operator's correction when digitizing a photoplot and allocating blocks of areas of individual plants. But, using modern information technologies, it is possible to automate many stages of work, which significantly reduces the time spent on the study of plant abundance. Also, our study showed a higher accuracy of determining the projective coverage of bryophytes, and, in fact, the complete elimination of subjectivity, compared to the glance-based methods. The results of the study showed: in spite of the use of several programs, the speed of processing of registration sites with the use of information technologies was significantly higher than the glance-based methods. This makes it possible to recommend the use of modern information technologies in the analysis of bryophyte abundance.

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