Understanding the distribution of plant species and vegetation communities is important for effective conservation planning and ecosystem management, but many parts of the world remain under-surveyed. The Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory is vast, remote, and sparsely populated; knowledge of the flora, in many areas, is limited to common or dominant species. Here, we describe and contrast the benefits and trade-offs between two approaches to botanical survey – vegetation sampling (assessment of structural attributes and species composition, fundamentally for mapping purposes) and hybrid floristic survey (an intensive, inventory approach considering seasonality) – as applied in each of four remote areas of the Australian wet–dry monsoonal tropics. Hybrid floristic survey effectively doubled the species richness recorded within each study area, largely due to improved detections of forbs and sedges. Species-sampling effort relationships predicted hybrid floristic survey to consistently out-perform vegetation sampling in maximum species richness and rate of species accumulation. Although vegetation sampling offers an efficient means of circumscribing vegetation communities over large areas, hybrid floristic survey improved detection of seasonal species and, potentially, those of conservation concern. Strategic, proactive investment in hybrid floristic surveys may offer improved conservation outcomes and potential efficiency dividends in biodiversity conservation planning.

了解植物物种和植被群落的分布对于有效的保护规划和生态系统管理很重要，但是世界上许多地方的调查仍然不足。澳大利亚北领地的顶端是广阔，偏远且人烟稀少的地区。在许多地区，对植物区系的了解仅限于常见或优势物种。在这里，我们描述并对比了两种植物调查方法的益处和取舍–植被采样（评估结构属性和物种组成，主要用于制图）和混合植物区系调查（考虑季节因素的密集，清点方法）–适用于澳大利亚干湿季风热带地区的四个偏远地区。混合植物区系调查有效地将每个研究区域内记录的物种丰富度提高了一倍，这在很大程度上是由于改进了对前哨和莎草的检测。物种-采样工作量之间的关系预测，在最大物种丰富度和物种积累率方面，混合植物区系调查将始终优于植被采样。尽管植被采样提供了一种在大范围内限制植被群落的有效手段，但是混合植物区系调查改善了对季节性物种以及潜在的那些具有保护意义的物种的检测。战略，