[APWG] Data of toe-points, can put an area quickly into a category

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Dear Wayne and All,

Thanks for your email.  The Toe-point method of measuring weed and/or
native cover is in the literature, when Raymond Evans and R. Merton Love
wrote up their method in 1957.

The 33-toe point is much, much better than no measurements, or just photos
taken when doing before and after measurements for any weeding or
restoration project.  We never want to enter the Dark Ages of no data for
our weeding or restoration projects, I hope?.

This morning I counted the 2011 data of my 600 pace toe-point going down
the north end of Russian Ridge, that you can see at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/invent.html and included in the toe-points at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/WMA.html, and here is how the data sorts out:

 33 toe-points: 0 native grasses, 33% wildflowers, 67% weeds.
100 toe-points: 0 native grasses, 41% wildflowers, 59% weeds.
200 toe-points: 0 native grasses, 45% wildflowers, 55% weeds.
600 toe-points: 3% native grasses, 42% wildflowers, 55% weeds.

As I said before, with the toe-points you are just gathering enough data
to be able to put your area into one of the six broad native cover quality
categories.

You can see from the data, that no matter at what scale you measure from
33 to 600 paces, the area still is in the Poor category of 26-50% combined
wildflower and native grass cover.

I would love to have Wayne or anyone else, to go out and compare the
33-pace Toe-point with any other weed or native vegetation cover measuring
method that exists?

The test would be, to see if the 33 toe-points can put an area into one of
the six quality categories faster and with less effort than any other
method that is in the scientific literature currently?  And I am
predicting, that all of the methods will ultimately put the area into
exactly the same native cover quality category, at the end of the day?

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333