We used both MRT and TWINSPAN to classify the forest communities in the southern part of Lüliang Mountain. The MRT analysis gave a tree with the splits based on additional environmental factors. The degree of consistency between the two classifications are compared through the coherence coefficient.

(1) MRT divided 41 forest quadrats into four formations: the Platycladus orientalis formation, Acer davidii formation, Quercus wutaishanica formation and Diospyros kaki formation. The types of the formations are consistent with the analysis results from TWINSPAN. (2) Based on the quadrats that compromise the formations, these two methodologies provided a relatively high consistency, with the coherence coefficient up to 80.5%. (3) Compared with the TWINSPAN, the MRT can be seen as a form of constrained classification analysis that can relate different aspects of species composition to environmental data, so the clusters defined by the MRT define community types of the ecotone in an objective manner not available in other techniques. Finally, the TWINSPAN is a very effective classification technique in plant ecology research. However, the MRT has advantage over the TWINSPAN in terms of classifying continuous or transitional quadrats.