User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
For my project I wanted to see if (a) Populus alba density was correlated with soil moisture content and (b) if P. alba density was different between my measured transects. I compiled my data into a table and also made a few figures. The table was made simply with excel and then I imported the excel sheet into R as a .csv file to make a few figures. I have never been great at using R or excel, but with help of a few YouTube videos and forums I was able to figure out the input required to make the graphs I wanted. My biggest difficulty was ensuring that all of the labels on my graphs were correct.
The outcome of my data was surprising because there was (a) a NEGATIVE correlation between P. alba density and soil moisture content and (b) There was a linear increase in P. alba density from the east transect to the west. This is most surprising because there is a dyke on the west side, so one would think that the soil moisture would be highest closer to the dyke (westward), but the results showed the opposite. This strangeness prompted me to further investigate whether sampling error was a large contributor to this. I am not well-versed in using R to fit data to a model, but I know what normal distributions are supposed to look like on histograms, so I mapped my data onto histograms and analyzed for normality. None was found in my soil samples, so I’m chalking this up to sampling error and would recommend further investigation at a drier time of the year to detect how soil moisture is related to P. alba density. I have attached a word doc of all my figures and tables I will be using for my final report.
