Blog Post 6: Data Collection

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I collected my data on August 2nd during the afternoon. It was a very warm and stormy day here in Florida. I managed to find a 2-3h window between two rainfalls to go collect my data on the field.

In order to thoroughly sample my site, I decided to double the number of samples or transects from my initial data collection in module 3. I then collected the same number of subsamples (or quadrats) per transects (10) but on 10 samples instead of 5. To do so, I had to collect my samples every 8 metres along the width of the field instead of every 16m.

Considering that I had collected my pre-experimental data from module 3 a few months ago, I decided to collect 10 new samples instead of only adding the 5 new ones to my already collected data. I feared that flower abundance might have changed with time and so I resampled everything.

The previous data collection that was made a few months ago greatly improved and facilitated my afternoon of August 2nd. The difficulties I had with keeping my transects straight were eliminated by the simple trick I elaborated months ago. Before starting my sampling, I would spot 2 or 3 checkpoints along the transect to keep it straight. I believe this simple adjustment helped me maintain a greater quality of samples.

I did not observe any new patterns during this exercise. The data collected seems fairly similar to the set collected months ago and so my observations and comments were the same.

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