User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
Shannon Myles
March 10th
My study investigates the abundance of flowering plants and their distribution pattern through the field. As my field is a part of an ecotone (the transition zone between the sea/sandy beach to the mainland), I hypothesized that a gradient in flower abundance will be surveyed. It is a recurring pattern in nature that a transitional zone between two ecosystems is characterized by a gradient that essentially fades both ecosystems into one another. In my specific case, the marine environment that is the ocean meets a drastic end at the shoreline. Therefore, the mainland ecosystem is the only one that will display this gradient (fading). The underlying processes that might come into play to create this (potential) gradient are of a wide range that includes soil moisture, soil composition, other vegetation and root systems, salt concentrations, etc.
The summarizing keywords for my study could be the following: Ecotone, transitional abundance gradient, flowering plants.
