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I would say that all in all, collecting the data for my field study was fairly straightforward and I believe it was an effective way to get the information required by my hypothesis. Some of the notable difficulties I faced in collecting this information was that the quadrats were muddy and wet to get to as the cattails grow on the edge of a pond and the season had the ground very waterlogged, as well as the cattails are quite tall compared to me so I brought along a taller person to help verify I was getting the right numbers. However, I would collect data the same way in the future. I was able to guarantee the measurement of my quadrats easily and the random step generator made it so that I was still collecting from random sample sites even though my species of study occurred along a straight line around the lake. The data that I collected was surprising in that when I did the initial observations, I was sure that the more crowded areas had more intact catttails than the less crowded areas (as is predicted by my hypothesis) but the data did not show this pattern. But, as is science I suppose. If I were to make any changes, I would perhaps like to do more quadrats than five to see if that affected the results at all.
Cattails do usually grow below the high water mark so I was wondering if you had waders! I wonder if water depth makes a difference, is there much difference in the substrate or water depth within the area cattails are found?