Category: Post 9: Field Research Reflections

Blog Post 9: Field Research Reflections

TRU Open Learning Leave a comment

My field project took a while to jump start, I had to change my subject of interest and location due to the unforeseeable weather changes in the prairies. First we had flooding (dikes were built and flood evacuations were issued), and any area near the river was closed off for almost two months. Followed by crazy wind storms, and tornado’s touching down – so again a new location was needed to carry out my research. So in summary, I had many changes to the design before actually implementing the final one.

Once if was formed, and after data collection was finished no other issues came up – which is really nice.

Engaging in the practice has altered my appreciation for how ecological theory is developed. I think that ecology observation studies require a lot of patience, time, and the ability to adapt with changing conditions – as nature is constantly changing.

This was a wonderful course, and I really enjoyed stepping out of my usual biological study stream. Ecology was refreshing and the topics very fascinating and applicable to everyday life.

Blog Post 9

TRU Open Learning Leave a comment

I changed my hypothesis to make my project more community ecology focused. I changed it to:

the spatial distribution of garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) is determined by body size and ambient temperature.

I also had to change many parts of my project but I was able to keep and use the data I had collected over the summer. I also changed my study design to a logistic regression design. Over the course I now understand more ecology theory and practices. Ive also learned how vast the field of ecology is.

Post 9: Field Research Reflections

TRU Open Learning 1 Comment

My study design remained quite consistent throughout the course of the research project. My understanding of experimental design, however, did develop substantially. Early on I decided that i would divide my sample plots into elevation zones that correlated with the environmental gradient, which I hypothesised would respond to elevation from the lake shore. In doing so, I realised the purpose and importance of subplots in field experiments, as they allowed me to accurately analyse data from the seperate sample plots — by comparing data sampled from the same elevation zones in the different plots. As my hypothesis developed I also became aware of the influence of substrate on my response variable (species composition), which would make it difficult to determine the extent to which my predictor variable (elevation/flood frequency) affected it. However, as my research progressed I realised that that substrate is also very much influenced by flood frequency, and thus is closely tied to my predictor variable. For this reason I included substrate descriptions in my sampling, and took it into consideration in my analysis of the results.

 

Blog Post 9: Field Research Reflections

TRU Open Learning Leave a comment

I am so glad that I took this course, although it was incredibly challenging for me. I have conducted several wildlife studies, habitat assessments, etc., however, I have never designed one. I spent the whole summer collecting data, and I have a greater understanding of how difficult it is to come up with and test a hypothesis. I changed my focus NUMEROUS times-the world is a big place, and narrowing down just WHAT to study was the most challenging. I am finalizing my research paper, and seeing all my data in one place is incredibly rewarding. I adore being out in the field, and I plan to repeat this study for my day job next year, with some changes-I made a LOT of mistakes along the way, but I do believe you learn more from your failures.

Post 9: Field Research Reflections

TRU Open Learning Leave a comment

The research project as a whole was quite enjoyable. I had trouble planning the initial stages of my sampling, but once I understood what I wanted to study the sampling came along fairly well. One hard part of this study was not having feedback on my small assignments over 40 days. This was during a time when I was doing my field experiments and formulating my data. When I received feedback, I became aware that I had made errors by including raw data on my graph, and ended up changing the results of my experiment to exclude slope aspect. After changing my data to a table that summarized my information. I was able to disprove my hypothesis. At first, I thought the results were underwhelming. However, when I began interpreting my results, I was fascinated with what I had found. Overall, the process was informative and I value the science of Ecology much more than when I started. I ended up learning how detrimental the invasive species Rubus Armeniacus can be to native vegetation, as it is capable of dominating interspecies competition within edge communities and disturbance zones on Vancouver Island. Most of all I like how ecological theory has changed my perception of the surrounding community, as I spent much time exploring its reaches, and learning about environmental processes at work.

Blog Post 9: Reflections

TRU Open Learning 3 Comments

My research project was a wild ride. Originally, I had planned to sample bryophytes on Mount Tolmie, which is a park that has an altitudinal gradient. In March when the pandemic hit, I left Victoria – where I was living and attending school – and I did not want to start my entire project from scratch. Earlier in my university career at UVic, I had learned about a website called iNaturalist and I wondered if I could use this website to help me collect data from my original space without having to be there. I ended up using citizen scientist data from iNaturalist in conjunction with some data that I had collected back in February of 2020. Because of this change, I had to make a lot of adjustments in my design and expectations for this project. Using iNaturalist was surprisingly easy, and I was able to get approximately 50 data points for use in my study. Since engaging in the practice of ecology I definitely have a greater appreciation for this field of biology, I have focused on cells and biochemistry for much of my education and never thought much about ecology, but this project opened a big door in my mind!

Blog Post 9 – Field Research Reflections

TRU Open Learning Leave a comment

Throughout this course, I have come to appreciate the work that gets put into ecological research, and all the pieces that need to be put together in order to create just one study. It has been good practice to turn simple observations into a full project, and when I initially started I wasn’t quite sure how it was all going to work out in the end. Reading through all the research papers in this course helped alot, and I felt as though I was really able to grasp how a paper should come together. It has been interesting linking together all the natural processes that are occurring in the field and has been rewarding seeing all my work come together onto one report. Building and designing a study has been much more work than I expected. Not only this, but the time it actually takes in the field to build transects, quadrants, count specimens, and more, is much greater than anticipated. I can only imagine the time and effort large scale studies would take, and this helps me understand why research can take years and years to complete. Over this course I often changed my design slightly, up until the final report. There is so much to learn, and each module I learned new pieces of key information that helped build my final report. Looking forward to using all this new-found knowledge for future learning and research!

Post 9: Field Research

TRU Open Learning 1 Comment

My field research project is finally complete. Implementation of the experiment mostly went well although I did have some trouble in some areas due to the terrain. Running a transect through a blackberry thicket was somewhat of a challenge. After a few cuts and scrapes, and more then a fair share of curse words, I was able to get the data I set out to get but it wasn’t easy. As far as changes from my initial design there were only a few which involved narrowing my study area from my probably too ambitious initial plans. My transects became smaller due to some slopes I could not climb, and I had to constrict the overall study area because of brush that was thicker then the blackberry which gave me trouble. Better preliminary research could have avoided these problems and even could have changed the whole nature of my experiment, which turned out to prove my hypothesis wrong.

I have to admit that going into this course I understood many of the concepts of ecology but not the processes in which it’s studied, so engaging in this field study has been a great asset and has changed my understanding of the subjects involved. This course has definitely led to a greater appreciation of ecology as a science, especially since much of its study can’t be done in a lab and involves being out in the field, getting dirty, pushing through blackberry thickets!

Blog Post-9

TRU Open Learning Leave a comment

The study of my research project was straightforward, but I did have to slightly modify my experimental design to make my conclusion stronger by collecting more data. I also have to study behaviour of different species of birds in order to relate to the specific habitat , in which I came across some unknown bird species which can be more interesting to study for future studies.

 

Blog Post 9: Field Research Reflections

TRU Open Learning Leave a comment

Create a final blog post that reflects on your field research. You both designed a field experiment and then carried it out. Did you have any issues with the implementation or have to make any changes to your design? Has engaging in the practice of ecology altered your appreciation for how ecological theory is developed?

My appreciation for the detail and depth in ecology has been wildly expanded. I performed the simplest of experiments and even then, the amount of hours, work, thought and literature review accompanying it surprised me. I have definitely found a new appreciation for ecologists. My implementation of design was simple from the beginning, but as I was sampling I kept thinking of more and more factors that should have been considered and further experimentation that would need to be performed to have my research make any sense or be of accuracy.