User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
I do not feel that I had any trouble organizing my data. I would have liked to be able to more accurately measure the thickness of the green layer in the bark but lacked the needed equipment. I would have also liked to sample more locations but without a way to travel into the forest in the snow it was not possible. The data I was able to collect was fairly straightforward to organize as I was just measuring the presence or absence of the green color on the trunk of the tree. I was surprised by some of the data that I collected. I found that while most of the trees sampled had green only on the south side as I predicted, some had green all the way around the tree while others had none visible. I also found that elevation could be a factor in the amount of green as the trees sampled from higher elevations had a deeper color of green likely indicating a thicker layer of chlorophyll. This could be due to the harsher conditions and increased length of winter present at the higher elevation. Further exploration would be useful to determine if there was any impact due to the clonal nature of aspen trees. It could be that some trees did not have any noticeable green pigment because some of the surrounding trees with better access to sunlight were supplying other trees in the family group with energy. I would also like to further investigate if the age and circumference had any relation to the color. I did notice in my results that the smaller trees were a darker green as well as being green further up and down than the bigger trees. This could be due to their smaller root system and not having access to as much of the surrounding resources as the larger, more established trees.
