Blog 5

Blog Post 5: Design Reflections
1. Create a blog post to discuss the collection of the initial data in Module 3. Did you have any difficulties in implementing your sampling strategy? If yes, what were these difficulties? Was the data that you collected surprising in any way? Do you plan to continue to collect data using the same technique, or do you need to modify your approach? If you will modify your approach, explain briefly how you think your modification will improve your research.

My initial data showed some support for my hypothesis but wasn’t enough data to really be strong. I think I will need to adjust it somewhat to be able to check more samples.

2. Read some of the blogs done by other students in this course and look over the hypotheses that they are investigating. Please offer constructive criticism of one other student’s hypothesis. Post this feedback as a comment on their blog. Topics to consider for feedback include: is the prediction clear and falsifiable, are the pieces and patterns under investigation clearly stated, do the predictor and response variables seem easily measurable in a field setting, and are there any potentially confounding variables that the investigator should be concerned about.

Post 5: Design Reflections
Posted on November 4, 2020 by tparekh
When I originally started gathering data, I tried keeping track of all the species that had percent coverage over 10%. In some of the quadrats there were 5 or 6 different species, so I have decided to only tabulate the most prevalent 2 or 3 species. From looking at all the quadrats the vegetation that seems to be the most common in all regions is the veiny meadow rue and cow parsnip.
When looking specifically at veiny meadow rue there seems to be a clear line moving horizontally across the hill that could define the floodplain. My hypothesis is that vegetation species and their percent cover will either decrease or increase in relation to their proximity to the stormwater pond. Vegetation such as cow parsnip will be more common regardless of distance from the stormwater pond as it is a more versatile species.
When selecting my quadrats I could have used a more methodical approach. Instead of blindly tossing a ball and then creating a quadrat around that I kind of “randomly” selected my quadrats based on what I thought would return the best quality of data that I could use. In that sense, the data presented may not accurately depict the actual percent coverage of vegetation in the 4 zones being studied.
I could have also increased the size or number of quadrats as larger species would naturally occupy more percent of a 1m x 1m quadrat and a larger quadrat or more quadrats would be able to more accurately display the percent coverage of smaller vegetation species.
These samples were not collected in the spring months, but I think it would have been interesting to see how vegetation would have responded to the melting and constant flooding that would be experienced. Maybe if there were larger amounts of snow that was melting then flooding would be more prevalent which could push vegetation boundaries up to higher elevations as opposed to a lighter winter where not as much snow would melt and vegetation boundaries may be at lower elevations.
It would be interesting to see these boundaries in relation to the amount of snow fall from the previous winter and see if there was some correlation between the two.
My reply:
This sounds like very interesting research! I think you are right about increasing the number of quadrants to capture the small vegetation more accurately. I had that issue with my study as well and found that I wasn’t able to capture enough data with the amount of samples I had initially taken.