Community Analysis is a basic skill for ecological studies and is very useful tool for many field studies.
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| Vegetation map for the City of San Carlos, California (credit: http://www.cityofsancarlos.org) |
Novice
- Shows little awareness of the need to classify places or things.
- Uses only simple, haphazard processes to group places or things.
- Performs simple community analyses if provided with step-by-step instructions.
Advanced Beginner
- Recognizes the general requirements for community analysis data.
- Organizes data, inputs the data into community analysis software, and runs the analysis.
- Produces competent, basic interpretations from the community analysis software.
Competent
- Handles qualitative and quantitative community analysis data with confidence.
- Recognizes the value in doing community analyses.
- Displays classification data on maps.
- Clearly understands the underlying procedures (e.g., similarity matrix, dendrogram display).
Proficient
- Uses a variety of community analysis tools and moves data effortlessly between tool sets.
- Fully integrates the community analysis process from the recognition of a problem through the display of the analysis products and interpretation of the problem.
- Promotes the use of the entire suite of community analysis tools.
Expert
- Understands the benefits and limitations of the models underlying community analysis tools.
- Critically evaluates community analysis results in the context of the problem, data limitations and analytical methodology constraints.
- Creates visualizations that are innovative and highly explanatory.
- Develops new tools to complement the arsenal of community analysis software.
Please Note: The skills and behaviors for this topic are under development.
