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Upon collection of my data, summarizing the information obtained was not a challenging task. However, what I did find challenging was organizing the data that I obtained into a manner that could be easily read and understood by others. A 1m2 quadrat was used to measure percentage coverage, a 0.5m2 quadrat was used to measure the abundance of the species and a 0.25m2 quadrat was used to measure absence/presence. Each of the three quadrats was placed randomly five times at each site, and data was collected. Overall, my data did not reveal anything too surprising. Although the results obtained supported my hypothesis and predictions to some extent, upon analysis of the data collected, I do realize that other factors that impact each of the plant species directly play a more essential role in the distribution. As such, further exploration ideas consist of some factors such as, climate, soil condition, water exposure, invasive species, biological interactions, and etc. An example of my data regarding abundance, organized into a table is shown below:
Table 1: The table below depicts the abundance of each of the six species present at each of the three sites at Milliken District Park. The first site, Site A, is within the forest, the second site, Site B, is outside of the forest, just before a large pond, and the third site, Site C, is the area on the other side of the pond. The ACFOR scale was used to measure whether the species was Abundant, Common, Frequent, Occasional, or Rare. A species was considered abundant if it was present 10 or more times within the quadrat. It was considered common if it was present 7-9 times within the quadrat, it was considered frequent if it was present 5-6 times within the quadrat, it was considered occasional if it was present 3-4 times within the quadrat and it was considered rare if it was present 2 or fewer times within the quadrat.
