For the record I'm in my final year of an ecology and conservation biology major and have done sampling along transects but never been asked this
Anyway here's the info:
- belt transect:
1. Set out your transect line
2. Sample along the transect at regular intervals using quadrats
3. Put all of your data into excel and spend hours trying to analyse it because even with pivot tables it's just too much and very frustrating thus motivating you to learn R ...Since you're sampling in quadrats you can see changes in abundance and distribution along the transect
- line intercept
1. Set out your transect
2. Rather than picking out particular quadrats, note everything that intercepts the transect line
This can give you information on distribution but not abundance. Useful for things like building species accumulation curves where you don't need abundance info as it's quicker than using quadrats.
- strip census
1. Set out your transect and decide a distance either side that you'll be including in the strip
2. Note everything that intercepts that strip
You
could think of the strip as being like one long thin quadrat but like in line transects you don't record abundance; so basically it's line intercept but a thick line (that therefore takes longer)
I hope this helps