Book about ordination in ecology

Question

This is a question I posted on Cross Validated few weeks ago but no response has been given so far.

I am looking for a book that would cover a lot of different ordinations techniques (indirect gradient analysis e.g. PCA, CA, DCA, MDS, nMDS but also direct gradient analysis e.g. CCA, CCorA, RDA) with applications in ecology (with R would be better) and mostly focusing on these methods.

I think " Numerical Ecology " by Legendre & Legendre (https://www.elsevier.com/books/numerical-ecology/legendre/978-0-444-53868-0#) would be relevant but it seems to cover a very extensive number of topics. Any other idea ?

Answer 1

I took a class in ordination methods a few months ago and found the following books helpful in better understanding the various techniques:

Multivariate Statistical Methods: A Primer by Brian Manley https://www.crcpress.com/Multivariate-Statistical-Methods-A-Primer-Fourth-Edition/Manly-Alberto/p/book/9781498728966

Correspondence Analysis in Practice by Michael Greenacre (this is somewhat more in-depth for forms of CA) https://www.crcpress.com/Correspondence-Analysis-in-Practice-Third-Edition/Greenacre/p/book/9781498731775

Multivariate Statistics for Wildlife and Ecology Research by McGarigal, Cushman, and Stafford https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387988917

Numerical Ecology is really excellent, even if it covers a broad number of topics. I focused on the ordination methods and found it to be very straightforward. Check out the McGarigal et al. book if you are interested in seeing examples of application in ecology.

Answer 2

You might also want to consider:

1. Tree diversity analysis by Kindt and Coe 2005. Freely and legally available here. Not very deep but nice and crisp introductions + its free.

2. Numerical Ecology with R by Borcard et al. 2018; https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-4419-7976-6 Little brother of Legendre and Legendre 2012. Excellent book with many examples in the R language. Also very up to date as it was released this year.

3. Analyzing Ecological Data by Zuur et al 2007; https://www.springer.com/us/book/9780387459677. Also a nice book covering the basics of ordination in ecology.