Plant Community Subsystem

This is the initial plant community editor, with the add functional group chosen from the edit menu, and a functional group selection panel poped up.

After the functional groups are selected they are scaled to their precent of maximum expression for a particular site and plant community.

Percent of Maximum expression

This is prefered to percent of cover becaues in the case of functional groups with different peak standing crops the percentage distribution of groups differs. (In January a site may have 100% cool season grass cover, yet in August the cover may revert to 95% Warm season grasses.) You may have less than 100% of Maximum expression if other species compete for physical space, or if the soil is not fertile enough to produce the maximum expression of this functional group.