User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
After the previous outing I decided to no longer spend any time sampling the back 15 acres of my property. This is because it is a heavily dense forest, therefore the crown cover is much to dense and cannot support the growing of Giant Hogweed as it is shade intolerant. That was the difficulty I found in my previous outings, too much time spent in the higher elevation and dense forest plots that would throw the results off of the findings. It is evident that they grow in disturbed sites and with lots of sun.
In the bottom portion of the property (disturbed site) I continued to use the random sampling method, as well as built a 1 m2 quadrant . Using a larger quadrant is appropriate for this study as the plants are much larger, so having a larger sampling plot will give a better representation of the 15 acre disturbed site. At each site I take 3 sample plots 5m apart in a random direction. This allows for more area being sampled.
