User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
I modified my data collection strategy from my initial plan, as I could not do spore counts on the fronds as it is spring time and the new fronds did not have spores and the mature fronds had dispersed their spores. Instead I measured the width of the widest pinna of the longest frond, which still gives an indication of the capacity of the frond to carry spores, so I think this approach will work. I also decided to just count the new fronds per crown as it was very difficult to count all the fronds, as many were rotting or broken and it was hard to determine which were viable fronds and which were not. Just counting the new fronds should still give an indication of the vitality of the fern.
In terms of laying out a 15m rope marked at 3 m intervals and then selecting the closest fern to that point, this worked well and I will continue to do this. I will increase the distance between sampling lines from 1m to 2m as the ferns can be as much as 2m across so I do not want to be counting the same fern on two different sampling lines.
