A comparison of five methods for assessing veld condition in the natal midlands

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Abstract
Site rankings obtained from five methods of scoring veld condition in the highland sourveld and the moist tall grassveld of the Natal Midlands were correlated with rankings from methods of multivariate analysis. With few exceptions, all methods gave rankings which were strongly correlated with rankings from detrended correspondence analysis, thus indicating that they all provide a practical means of indexing the relative veld condition of sites with reasonable precision. The weighted quantitative climax and key species methods were superior to the other three methods in this respect. The key species method has the advantage of simplicity and speed, and should stimulate farmers to undertake routine monitoring of their veld in these two regions.