User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
Looking back on this research project it did not turn out exactly as I was hoping it would, but the experience of dealing with the complexity of implementing the research in this field did give me a large appreciation for all the effort that has to go into any study in the field of ecology. Lab work in general you get a fair share of hurdles to jump over but there’s so many confounding variables and factors to take into account when working in the field. I wish I’d had more of the tools I’ve read about for testing soil pH, like the onsite probes you can use in the field rather than having to make solutions and test it with a meter in the lab. That said having changed the ratio of the soil water solutions I was testing and sieving out the organic mater in the samples did at least allow me to collect reliable data where I was more sure about the readings being the true values, but if I’d had one of the probes I could have taken more samples.
