6 – Bush counting!

I completed my data collection over 2 days, and got 22 replicate counts of the bushes coming up the hill from the creek. It was fairly treacherous in the deep snow, and I found that there were a lot of short plants that could not easily be counted. In addition, the snow also limited the sampling area, so I was only able to collect from two sites around the creek. Ultimately, I was able to sample approximately a quarter of the creek hillside. I recruited my partner to help me count, and it was really helpful because we could compare our numbers and discuss any discrepancies.

I was surprised to find that the number of brush bushes increased almost to the top of the hillside, and then dropped off quickly at the top. I’m not sure if this is caused by a previous disturbance on the hillside (it borders two roads and has possibly been sprayed or mowed to ease road maintenance). I haven’t analyzed any data yet, so I will have to wait and see what I see, but there definitely appears to be a relationship between the distance from the creek and the number of brush plants.

Getting exact distance measurements from the creek proved to be very challenging, and took some practice. Ultimately, I’m very happy with the sampling strategy I chose for this. Using the line count method was a lot faster than trying to set up area counts, especially since the bushes are quite large. I used 0.5m on either side of the measuring rope, which still allowed me to measure the number of bushes per square meter for each of the quadrats.