Determining Optimal Plot Size Using Saturation and Unsaturation Curves in the Western Taurus Area of the Mediterranean Region, Turkey

Abstract—This study was performed to decide the optimum sampling area by estimating minimum sampling areas (MSAs) in the Sarıkaya Wildlife Reserve Area (WLRA) of Western Taurus, the richest endemism center of Turkey and containing almost all Mediterranean vegetation layers. Data were taken from 20 standard sampling plots of 32 × 32 m (1024 m²). Standard sampling plots were divided into subplots, and plant data were recorded from each one. Then the subplots were combined from the minimum subsample plot to the last largest one by adding the newly detected species. Four unsaturation curves and two saturation curves (i.e., power function (FP) and exponential function (FE)) were employed to estimate MSAs of the sampling plots. The upper limit value of estimated species richness, \(S_{t}^{'}\) obtained from the Michaelis–Menten (MM) model and the Hanes–Woolf (HW) model was used in MSA equations of the saturation curves for each sampling plot. The goodness-of-fit measures were generated using the corrected Akaike Information Criterion \(\left( {AI{{C}_{c}}} \right)\). Saturation curves, particularly exponential function, provided most of the best fit models. The findings indicate that the size of the optimum sampling area for obtaining sufficient information about plant diversity should be equal to or greater than 900 m² in the study area.