User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
For my research project, I chose the site that is designated as a City Park. McArthur island park is an area of 51 ha based on the parks official website data. It is surrounded by a sub-urban environment but is separated from it by a corridor – river pocket that makes it an island and connects to the big land by two bridges and a bridge with deranges which appears to control the water level in spring. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any information on the origin of this river pocket (man-made or naturally occurring). The GPS data for the site is Latitude 50,6960; Longitude -120,3785. I visited the site on Saturday July 22 at 15:30 for the primeral assessment, the weather was +29°C with 18 km/h of western wind, and humidity of 62%. The site appears to be a highly disturbed area because it contains 23 sport facilities as well as biking routs and a golf course. Therefore, majority of the area is covered by the man-made loan grass, ratio of green cover to concrete from the maps appears to be 5:1. The area of interest was mainly located on the western part of the park. It is a line of wild growth on one side bordering with the river valley and on the other side boarders with the cycling route that is 3,5 meters wide and then with the golf and soccer court (circled on the picture attached). The water level drops significantly in late September, creating a solid ground that connects the island to the sub-urban areas until mid-April. On the northern part of the area of interest man-made butterfly garden was assessed as well indicated by a dot on the map.
The vegetation is majorly represented by birch trees Betulla, young willow trees Salix, burdocks Arctium, low area by the water is covered in Polytrichum communis, Psilotum and Tetraphis pellucida. Middle height area is majorally represented by rough horse tail Equisetum.
The butterfly garden contained Verbena, Delphiniums, tiger lilies, Fleabane, poppy flowers, common mullein, and yellow daisies.
Young deer prints were found on the sand by the water and later was confirmed by a young deer found on the site, also squirrels, crows, ducks and woodpeckers were spotted.
On the butterfly garden, cabbage white butterflies Pieris rapae, wool carder bees Anthidium manicatum, western leafcutter bee Megachile perihirta, honey bees mostly male drones Apis, yellow faced bumblebees Bombus vosnesenskii and mixed bumblebees Bombus mixtus were spotted according to “Common pollinators of British Columbia visual identification guide”. It was noticed that the composition of pollinators in a suburb area neighboring the island is highly different.
Questions:
- Abundance of some pollinators species were highly outnumbered in the garden and their composition (richness) is very different from the one found in front yard gardens in the Suburbs, could urbanization gradient effect pollinator species composition?
- Which other effects could have impact on the population of pollinators in the study area (humidity, temperature, shading by human created structures by the site?
- What are the factors affecting the plant community composition on both sides of the river pocket as the vegetation is slightly different on both sides.
