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Post 7: Theoretical Perspectives

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My project examines the role that soil moisture has on the abundance and density of Labrador Tea in wetlands surrounding two small lakes.  The wetlands range in saturation from “flooded” (pooling water all season) to well-drained and range in distance from the lake shorelines.  The ecological processes that my hypothesis touches on is competition.  Plants that are stronger competitors and can thrive in a range a moisture levels are more likely to be able to survive in lake shorelines where changing water levels, wave action and ice scour are routine.  The ideas that underpin my research are that flooding intensity and duration are predictors of biological diversity and lake shoreline vegetation, therefore, is determined by changing water levels.  Another idea is that Labrador Tea, specifically, is common in wetland communities but not in well-drained or permanently flooded areas.

Three key words:  wetlands, shorelines, Ledum groenlandicum

Post 6: Data Collection

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I have sampled exactly as I described in the previous post: semi-randomly selected 5 shoreline sites on Eskers Lake West and Eskers Lake East 80-100m apart and within those 5 sites haphazardly sampled 3 1mX1m quadrats giving me 15 replicates.

The problems that I encountered were site access issues and difficulty identifying plant species.  In the end, the issue of site access may not be terrible.  The western shorelines of Eskers Lakes are at a lower elevation and have more wetlands while the northern and eastern shorelines are fairly steep and formed by eskers and would require boat access.  I am interested in soil moisture as the predictor variable so sampling well-drained steeper locations would not be as pertinent to the research.  As I expected, the plant identification was difficult for certain species so I made generalizations in my field notes (ie. “sedges” over “beaked sedge” or “water sedge”).

I have noticed that the Labrador Tea always co-exist with the Black Spruce.  Perhaps the presence of Black Spruce indicates higher soil moisture and the Labrador Tea is tolerant to a wide range of shade conditions.

Presence of spruce around wetlands proximal to Eskers Lake East.

Blog Post 6: Data Collection

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I have now completed around half of my point count surveys within the Burnaby Lake Regional Park area in an effort to measure bird species presence and abundance along an urbanized gradient (Site 1 – Urbanized Area, Site 2 – Moderately Urbanized Area, Site 3 – Naturalized Area).

To date, I have completed 4 replicate point count surveys in each of three areas (2 replicate locations per area, on 2 different dates). I will complete at least one more day of data collection, with 2 more replicate point count surveys in each of the three areas over the next week. Since revising my research design as highlighted in Blog Post 5 I have had no issues in implementing it. Performing surveys between dawn and 10:00am has resulted in a high level of bird detectability. In addition, limiting the number of point count surveys to two per habitat has also made the surveys manageable as it still takes about 1 hour to complete all 6 point count surveys across the three areas on any given sampling day. Overall, the switch to Burnaby Lake Regional Park and the revised hypothesis seems to be going very well and this was a good decision to make sooner rather than later in the research project.

I calculated my explanatory variables for each area (approximately 300m x 300m area) as a whole using aerial photography to determine the percent cover of natural habitat (forest, wetland, etc…) and anthropogenic habitat (buildings, roads, trails, etc…). I used a systematic sampling strategy to place my point count survey sites within each survey area randomly along the road or trail that runs through them. A random number generator provided the first survey point location in each site, while the second survey point was systematically placed 200m away to maintain the minimum distance required for independence between sites. At each point count survey all birds seen and heard within a 50m radius of the observation point were recorded during a 5-minute period.

Looking at the data quickly some ancillary patterns reveal that the species richness is lowest in the most urbanized area but further analysis will be required to determine whether species richness is highest in the moderately urbanized or naturalized area. Bird abundance has been quite high throughout all the sites so it has been hard to determine which site has the highest abundance. Site 1 does have large flocks of rock doves flying through it which will definitely elevate the overall abundance numbers for that site, whereas the other two sites have smaller abundances by individual species but more species overall.

Blog Post 1. Observations

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For my research project, I chose the site that is designated as a City Park. McArthur island park is an area of 51 ha based on the parks official website data. It is surrounded by a sub-urban environment but is separated from it by a corridor – river pocket that makes it an island and connects to the big land by two bridges and a bridge with deranges which appears to control the water level in spring. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any information on the origin of this river pocket (man-made or naturally occurring). The GPS data for the site is Latitude 50,6960; Longitude -120,3785. I visited the site on Saturday July 22 at 15:30 for the primeral assessment, the weather was +29°C with 18 km/h of western wind, and humidity of 62%. The site appears to be a highly disturbed area because it contains 23 sport facilities as well as biking routs and a golf course. Therefore, majority of the area is covered by the man-made loan grass, ratio of green cover to concrete from the maps appears to be 5:1. The area of interest was mainly located on the western part of the park. It is a line of wild growth on one side bordering with the river valley and on the other side boarders with the cycling route that is 3,5 meters wide and then with the golf and soccer court (circled on the picture attached). The water level drops significantly in late September, creating a solid ground that connects the island to the sub-urban areas until mid-April. On the northern part of the area of interest man-made butterfly garden was assessed as well indicated by a dot on the map.

The vegetation is majorly represented by birch trees Betulla, young willow trees Salix, burdocks Arctium, low area by the water is covered in Polytrichum communis, Psilotum and Tetraphis pellucida. Middle height area is majorally represented by rough horse tail Equisetum.

The butterfly garden contained Verbena, Delphiniums, tiger lilies, Fleabane, poppy flowers, common mullein, and yellow daisies.

Young deer prints were found on the sand by the water and later was confirmed by a young deer found on the site, also squirrels, crows, ducks and woodpeckers were spotted.

On the butterfly garden, cabbage white butterflies Pieris rapae, wool carder bees Anthidium manicatum, western leafcutter bee Megachile perihirta, honey bees mostly male drones Apis, yellow faced bumblebees Bombus vosnesenskii and mixed bumblebees Bombus mixtus were spotted according to “Common pollinators of British Columbia visual identification guide”. It was noticed that the composition of pollinators in a suburb area neighboring the island is highly different.

 

Questions:

  • Abundance of some pollinators species were highly outnumbered in the garden and their composition (richness) is very different from the one found in front yard gardens in the Suburbs, could urbanization gradient effect pollinator species composition?
  • Which other effects could have impact on the population of pollinators in the study area (humidity, temperature, shading by human created structures by the site?
  • What are the factors affecting the plant community composition on both sides of the river pocket as the vegetation is slightly different on both sides.

Post 8: Creating Figures

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After some messing around in Excel for a bit I created two figures, which contain two and three graphs respectively, though there is significant overlap between the two. They both contain a graph that displays the relationship between measured sunlight and branch growth, a graph showing the relationship between the distance to the nearest neighbour[ing tree] and branch growth and the second figure includes a graph showing the relationship between distance to nearest neighbour and measured sunlight.

I was surprised at first to see a stronger correlation between distance to “nearest nieghbour” and “branch growth” than between “measured sunlight” and “branch growth”, however this surprise quickly dissipated when the second graph measuring these variables (created from data taken at a second, lower elevation study area) actually showed a negative relationship, while that of “sunlight” and “branch growth” remained positive.

I was also quite surprised to see that the data did not fall into two distinct sets, or groupings, as I had initially predicted would occur (due to the observed distinction between number of branches on the uphill and downhill sides of each tree in the field). Prior to, and during my data collection, there seemed to be an obvious schism between the two sides of nearly every replicate. While the data still show a positive relationship between light measurements and frequency of branch growth, I suspect the sample size was not large enough to reflect this apparent discrepancy I noted in the field.

I know it sounds simple, but I actually struggled a bit with the question of how to properly label the axes. “Sunlight?” “measured sunlight?” “light”? After some deliberation I settled on “sunlight (W/m2)”, though as with which elements I will include in the figures that I put in the final report, I may change this.

I also was unsure about the whether or not to include the third graph (which shows relationship between “distance to nearest neighbour” and “sunlight”). I am still unsure whether both figures will include this graph, or if it will be included as a separate figure in the final report.

I also plan to take a harder look at the captions below each figure when putting together the final report to determine if they require further elaboration.

Blog Post # 7 Theoretical perspectives

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Animal behaviour has been something that we as our own species are fascinated with, we want to know what makes an animal tick, why does the cat flick its tail upwards whilst sometimes it “wags” it side to side. Behaviour of animals has become such interesting topic over the past few years as we seek answers to why animals do the things they do.

The major idea that underpins my research is the why, why and how does the Elephants drinking behaviour change as it gets hotter, how does it change as it gets colder. The Anatomy of the Elephant very well may hold the key to the answer as their enormous weight is matched to a small surface area (relative).

Keywords

African Elephant ( Loxodanta africana ), Temperature, Drinking

Graph

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Figure 1. Mean number of creeping juniper projections by location.
The graph generated for the purposes of this post (Figure 1) displays the results for my hypothesis that the number of creeping juniper projections differs between side of the stair case (South-East versus North-West). As the predictor variable is categorical, a bar graph was used to display the results. Location is found along the x-axis and mean number of projections is found on the y-axis. Mean calculations and the Mann-Whitney U test (for non-parametric data) were performed using SPSS v24. The graph was generated using Excel.

Despite there being a visual difference in bar height, the data did not support the results I had expected.There was no statistical difference between conditions (p = 0.25). Given the small sample size, I suspect that if I were to increase the number of replicates I would be able to detect a significant difference. I was limited in the number of samples I could take based on the amount of creeping juniper present and ensuring that my data were randomized by varying the distance between samples taken. This method allowed me to make observations along nearly the entire available creeping juniper. Future work should seek to sample multiple similar locations (e.g., slope, geographical area, similar abiotic features present).

Blog Post 1 – Field Research Project on Quarry Creek

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The area I chose to study for my field research project is located in Red Chris Mine on a stream called Quarry Creek. The mine is situated on the northeastern portion of Todagin Plateau in northwestern part of BC, which is on the boundary of two regional watersheds: Klappan and Iskut River.

The mine also falls within Tahltan Traditional Territory and as a member of the Tahltan Nation; I find it incredibly important to study this area and to understand the environmental impacts that can occur.

Quarry Creek is a second order stream that flows from the project site along the valley bottom and into the Klappan River. Quarry Creek will receive operational discharge from the north end of the tailings impound area of the mine.

Freshwater habitats contain organisms from many taxonomic groups; each group is likely to respond differently to concentrations of contaminants in the aquatic receiving environment. Aquatic receptor groups include aquatic plants, aquatic invertebrates, amphibians, fish, and aquatic-feeding birds.

The following points outlines what I want to base my research project on:

  • Identify potential environmental impacts from selenium in effluent.
  • Will Selenium bioaccumulation have long-term affect on Quarry Creek aquatic organisms?
  • Is there correlation or relationship between aqueous selenium concentrations and benthic invertebrate concentrations?
Date – August 2016
Date – August 2016
Date – January 2017
Date – January 2017