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Pasture condition can be assessed by comparing species occurrence across a
range of sites. Ordination techniques simplify these multi- attribute data
and display differences between sites, To interpret this pattern, the
species distributions are mapped over the site configuration. This
technique is applied to a data set from the northern Mitchell grass
community around Julia Creek, where the species frequencies of 48 permanent
monitoring sites have been measured. For a recording in May 1991, Astrebla
spp and Iseilema spp contributed most to the site pattern. Their direction
of increase in frequency across sites is opposing but not exactly opposite,
indicating some degree of interaction. This, together with other variation
inherent in the data, requires at least two dimensions of the ordination to
adequately represent the site configuration. For some site /season
combinations, condition is dependent on complex species relationships and
cannot be reduced to a simple pattern or a single condition index.