User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
For the ongoing field observations, I intend to document the creosote bushes of the Sonoran scrublands. The creosote bushes are one of the most frequent scrubland vegetations in this community.
I picked three 10m x 10m plots, 50m, 20m and 5 meters from a man-made oasis in Papago Park.
Area 3 (50m from water source):
Creosote plants are about about 1.5m evenly spaced from each other. The plants have grown to a height of about 2.2m tall on average. There are 46 individual plants in the plot with a wide band of separation around the outside of the plot where no plants are found. Each creosote plant is a pale green in colour with moderate foliage.
Area 2 (20m from water source):
The Creosote plants are about 1.1m evenly spaced from each other. The plants have grown to a height of about 2.4m tall on average. There are 61 individual plants in the plot with no band of separation around the outside of the plot. Each creosote plant is a pale green in colour with moderate foliage.
Area 1 (5m from water source):
The creosote plants are about 0.6m but unevenly spaced from each other. The plants have grown to a height of about 2.6m tall on average. There are 12 individual plants in the plot with wide bands of separation around each grouping of individuals. Each creosote plant is dark green in colour with heavy foliage.
My hypothesis is that creosote plants compete heavily with each other for soil moisture. I predict that creosote plants are adept at monopolizing soil moisture in a given area around themselves but either do not compete well with other plants at high soil moistures or prefer the rocky soil with better drainage farther from the water source.
A response variable: Creosote productivity (amount of mass per plot)
An explanatory variable: Soil moisture
Both variables would be continuous as they are prone to measurement and change.
ok looks interesting!