Design and analysis of incubator and greenhouse experiments to evaluate native plant species
(T
Tran, C
Brien and
J Boland with H Mancini and J Gibbs)
Revegetation along rail corridor has been considered as a means of solving rail track stability issues and weed and fire risk problems. One of the challenges of restoring vegetation in the rail corridor has been to identify an optimal planting regime in structure, density and species composition in order to address specific site problems, create stable plant communities and conform to industry standards for safety and maintenance requirements. The design and analysis of experiments to study different species, soils and soil-preparation treatments in incubator and greenhouse experiments has been investigated. This has resulted in the development of split plot designs in which both main plots and sub-plots employ two-dimensional designs and in which sub-plot treatments are latinized. Also, a comparison of analysis methods for count data from multistratum experiments has been conducted. The methods compared were analysis of variance, both untransformed and transformed, generalized linear models and generalized linear mixed models.
Investigators and affiliations:
T. T. Tran, Dr C. J. Brien, H. Mancini1, J. Gibbs1,
Assoc. Prof. J. Boland
1School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South
Australia, Australia.
Publications
Mancini, H., Tran, T. T., Gibbs, J., Brien, C. J. & Boland, J. (2006) Improving rail corridors by restoring native vegetation. In Ravitharan, R. (Ed.) Rail Achieving Growth: Proceedings of the Conference on Railway Engineering (CORE) 2006, Melbourne, 30 April - 3 May 2006. Melbourne, Railway Technical Society of Australasia (RTSA).