User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
I found the process of carrying out this research project to be quite interesting and educational. My single biggest challenge was coming up with a topic as there are so many interesting things to study! My next biggest challenge was taking the theory of an experimental design and actually implementing it in the field. I ended up changing my overall design a couple of times. For those not following my research project, I had looked at the differences in the frequency of occurrence and cover of species of moss on different slope positions of rock outcrops.
I had originally thought that I would use separate rock outcrops as the replicates, but I only found 4 outcrops in the area that had similar enough attributes to be compared as replicates, which did not meet the rule of 10. I therefore ended up collecting 10 samples in each slope position from among the different rock outcrops to serve as the replicates.
I had also originally intended to use a transect along which to locate evenly spaced plots within each rock outcrop, but I found that this restricted my sample locations too much given the variation in the orientation of the slope positions and it did not enable me to collect enough samples in the narrower slope positions (particularly the crests). I therefore switched to a strategic randomized selection in which I sampled an equal number of randomly selected plot locations within each slope position, in order to get a sufficient sample size from each slope position.
This process certainly gave me an appreciation of the complexity of implementing ecological experiments, particularly in a field setting, where it is sometimes difficult (e.g. costly or time-consuming), if not impossible (e.g. conditions have changed or species have moved on), to repeat any data collection. It is also very difficult to control for external environmental variables, which can interact with one another and vary across even small distances.
