User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
My time collecting data at Lost Lagoon, Stanley Park, I had no difficulties in implementing my systematic sampling strategy. I focus the study on examining bird species presence and record other species that I have observed. I’ve noticed a pattern of abundance at three different sites along an urbanized gradient.
Revised hypothesis: Bird species presence and abundance is impacted on how close their natural habitat is located near an urbanized city.
Revised predications are:
- Bird species richness will be highest in areas closer to the city (south side of lagoon)
- Bird species evenness will be highest in areas with the highest percent cover of natural habitat (west side of lagoon).
- Bird species richness/evenness will be lowest in areas near the main highway/road because of lack of food (east side of lagoon).
My response variable will remain as bird species presence and abundance (continuous variable), and my explanatory variable of percent cover (categorical variable) of natural habitat vs. urbanized areas (roads, buildings, trails) at each site as a whole will also remain the same.
In addition, the followings changes will be made in the experimental design in regards to the way data is collected:
- Initial sampling took place around 1:00pm and overall lots of activity and species present.
- My new sampling strategy includes two survey sites (point count surveys) in each of the three habitats along the gradient. During the replicate exercise, I expanded the number of point count surveys in one of the sites to five. While it would be ideal to maintain this type of replication it is too time consuming to perform five replicate surveys in each of the three sites. As a result, I will perform two replicates per site, and will conduct surveys at each site on at least three different days.
During the next blog I will go into more detail on the sampling strategy, sample unit, how these changes have impacted the data collection, and any ancillary patterns that appear in the data to support the new hypothesis and predictions.
