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Blog Post 9: Field Research Reflections
Create a final blog post that reflects on your field research. You both designed a field experiment and then carried it out. Did you have any issues with the implementation or have to make any changes to your design? Has engaging in the practice of ecology altered your appreciation for how ecological theory is developed?
Carrying out the field project from design to implementation was a fairly uncomplicated process. The POC technique that I used is a well studied and easy to follow strategy for quantifying vegetation for a large area of land. Next field project I think that I would gather more samples for the data to be more representative of the population. I also would have liked to apply a few more statistical values to show proper comparisons of two separate populations. The steep learning curve for me came in writing the report. The process of figuring out excel and learning the language of ecology and then trying to apply it to my research took a lot of brain power. It made me realize how important it is for learning to have a community of like-minded individuals around to bounce ideas off of and troubleshoot problems one may be having. Learning how to implement a design and write a report was eye-opening and hopefully rewarding ( we will see how the grading process goes) but I feel my appreciation for the practice of ecology would have been more conducive if there was an easy to access community to communicate with.
