Fieldwork Flashcards

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1
Q

What was the sample size for our physical enquiry?

A
  • 40 data points
  • Over 200m
  • Every 5m
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2
Q

What was the sampling method for our physical enquiry?

A
  • Systematic sampling to collect gradient data
  • Random systematic sampling to collect vegetation data
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3
Q

What equipment did we use for our physical enquiry?

A
  • 50m tape measure
  • Ranging poles
  • Clinometer
  • Quadrat
  • Species identification sheet
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4
Q

What were risks of our physical enquiry?

A
  • Ticks and snake bites (lyme disease and poison)
  • Injury from slips, trips and falls
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5
Q

What did we do to mitigate ticks and snake bites during our physical enquiry?

A
  • Tick checks done and removal devices carried
  • Warned about dangers of adders, told to make noise
  • Nearby hospital location known
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6
Q

What did we do to mitigate injury from slips, trips and falls during our physical enquiry?

A
  • Site doesn’t have steep/unsafe inclines
  • Wearing suitable footwear
  • Students in groups with teacher supervision
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7
Q

What is the title of our physical enquiry?

A

To investigate changes to dune characteristics at Knoll Beach

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8
Q

What was the hypothesis of our physical enquiry?

A

There is a significant change to the shape and vegetation on the sand dunes

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9
Q

What is the analysis supporting the changing shape of sand dunes in our physical enquiry?

A
  • There were dips between ridges but no wet slacks
  • Decline in height at 84m
  • Tourism led to footpaths, could be ‘slacks’ we identified
  • Long dry summer, cause water table to have lowered
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10
Q

What is the conclusion that dune shape changed in our physical enquiry?

A

Can conclude confidently, data shows dune shape changes, there are multiple dune ridges, separated by lower areas of dry slack with a height range of 8m

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11
Q

What is the analysis supporting the increasing vegetation of sand dunes in our physical enquiry?

A

Vegetation increased rapidly:
- Increased from 0% to 100% within 40m, stayed high
- Sand dune succession theory, soil acidity, water retention, wind shelter and nutrient levels all increased along transect
- More likely vegetation can grow and survive
- 100% coverage interrupted by human impact
- Footpaths

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12
Q

What is the analysis supporting the vegetation species changing in the sand dunes in our physical enquiry?

A

Vegetation species changed but didn’t become more diverse:
- Marram grass dominant between 14-40m
- Heather until 150m
- Gorse until 200m
- Marram adapted, has deep roots and curled waxy leaves
- Heather needs better shelter/soil
- Cyril Driver Project shows National Trust overprotected heather
- pH samples of soil shows increased acidity by factor 2
- Influencing vegetation

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13
Q

What is the conclusion that dune vegetation changed in our physical enquiry?

A

Vegetation coverage increases, dominant species changes

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14
Q

What is the justification for choosing Knoll Beach for our physical enquiry?

A
  • Large, 2km, deep and mature dunes, 1km deep, 200m transect
  • Owned by National Trust, can access for free
  • Conservation by National Trust, dunes in good condition
  • Previous research done provides background to understand vegetation changes
  • Popular tourist and local destination, can investigate impact of humans
  • Only 15 minute drive from fieldwork base in Swanage
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15
Q

What is the dune succession theory?

A

How sand dunes form, sand blown inland, trapped and colonised by plants
- Small embryo and fore dunes, pioneer species, sandwort and marram grass
- Decomposition increases nutrient value and water retention
- Soil more acidic
- Yellow and grey dunes, heather and gorse
- Helps us interpret sand dune transects

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16
Q

What is the Cyril Driver Project?

A

Cyril Driver, local nature enthusiast, studied and mapped dunes over a century ago, documented species
- 2013, National Trust recreated study, dunes changed significantly
- New dune ridge, open areas of sand reduced from 30% to 2%
- Heather and gorse dominant
- Encourage visitors to trample and wander over dunes to regenerate them
- Helps us understand limited variety of species, heather dominating, high coverage of vegetation

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17
Q

What are plant adaptations in sand dunes and what can this tell us?

A

Plants in sand dunes have to adapt to difficult growing conditions, high wind speeds, extremes of temperature, alkaline pH, lack of water in soil
- We can understand why some plants grow at the front and others at the back
- Mobile dune fronts, marram grass, extensive root systems, curled and waxy leaves
- Fixed dunes, heather and gorse, more shelter from wind, nutrient rich and acidic soil

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18
Q

What do we need to consider when evaluating our physical enquiry?

A
  • Reliability of method
  • Impact on result accuracy
  • Impact on conclusion validity
  • How could we improve?
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19
Q

What made our usage of clinometers reliable?

A
  • Used gradient data to calculate sand dune profile
  • Double checked readings for accuracy
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20
Q

What made our usage of clinometers unreliable?

A
  • Gravity led, takes time to settle
  • Some rusted or sticky
  • Open to human error
  • Dune heights unlikely to fully match real value by 1-2 degrees when drawn
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21
Q

What can we conclude from our usage of clinometers?

A
  • Dune shape clearly changed
  • Still valid
22
Q

How could we improve our use of clinometers?

A
  • Greater training in classrooms
  • Take more time
  • Repeated measurement
  • Taken average
23
Q

What made our method of analysing vegetation reliable?

A
  • Quadrat divided into 100 squares
  • Easy to do % veg cover
24
Q

What made our method of analysing vegetation unreliable?

A
  • Vegetation not in flower so difficult to identify and distinguish between different types of species
  • % veg cover time consuming to count
  • Common names e.g. ‘heather’ not specific, misidentification
  • Could be 10-30% inaccurate
25
Q

What can we conclude from our analysis of vegetation?

A
  • Clear transition from grass to heather, to gorse
  • Fairly valid
26
Q

How could we improve our analysis of vegetation?

A
  • Survey dunes in Spring for flowers
  • Seek help of botanist to identify plants or use app
  • Take more time and care to calculate % veg cover
27
Q

What factors affected the reliability of our physical enquiry?

A
  • Transect wasn’t straight
  • Tape measure wasn’t accurately laid
  • Transect was not long enough
  • Didn’t collect enough environmental data to understand vegetation change
28
Q

How did we use transect data in our physical enquiry?

A
  • Sand dune profile (type of line graph)
  • Shows dune shape, visually representative
  • Spot changes in land shape, identify fore and yellow dunes
  • Same scale of x and y axis
  • Accurate to-scale representation, avoided exaggeration
  • Plotted distance and gradient using protractor
  • Could calculate height of land through transect
  • Plotting data required precision, human error
  • Wasn’t clear whether ridges and dips were dunes or slacks, photos could have helped
29
Q

How did we present percentage vegetation?

A
  • Written out
  • Not visual, could have used proportional symbols or pie charts
  • Can’t spot patterns as easily
30
Q

How did we present vegetation type and pH data?

A
  • Overlaid above transect
  • Make links between data sets
  • Marram grass dominated first ridge, likely to be fore dune
31
Q

What did our sand dune profile tell us?

A
  • No embryo dune
  • First dune ridge 4m high
  • No indicator species
  • Embryo barely 1-2m high normally
  • Lost due to worsening coastal erosion & climate change
  • Heavy tourism could also erode embryo dunes
  • Able to identify fore and yellow dunes
  • Ridge peak at 4m at 20m and 8m at 45m
  • Little evidence for embryo dune, next fore dune
  • Dune after that yellow dune
  • Fore dune has marram grass, indicator species
32
Q

What are risks of our human enquiry?

A
  • Road traffic accident
  • Danger from members of the public
33
Q

How did we mitigate the risk of a road traffic accident in our human enquiry?

A
  • Conducting questionnaires in pedestrianised zones
  • Students briefed on road safety, cross at designated crossings
  • Staff first aid trained, carried first aid kits
34
Q

How did we mitigate the risk of danger from members of the public in our human enquiry?

A
  • Groups of minimum 3
  • School mobile phone number in case of an incident
  • Students stayed in busy areas with other members of public
  • Introduced politely and thanked people for their time
35
Q

Why did we choose Swanage as the location for our human enquiry?

A
  • Interesting demographic (population structure) with a high % of elderly and wealthy. This could affect support for new renewable technologies
  • Large population size and area allowing easy data collection within the 2 hour window we had to collect questionnaires. Larger sample size, up to 70 students to collect data at the same time
  • It is a very safe and accessible location from our YHA accommodation
  • A proposed large offshore wind farm did not get planning permission - suggests locals are knowledgable about he pros and cons of renewable energy
  • Area is popular tourist location with nearby World Heritage Site and AONB, which creates a potential conflict with installation of renewables that we wanted to explore
36
Q

What is NIMBYISM and how can this help us understand support of renewables in Swanage?

A
  • NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard
  • The concept that people naturally reject changes that take place near to where they live due to a fear that it will affect them negatively
  • Helps us understand why many local residents in Swanage do not support the creation of more wind and solar farms
37
Q

What is an AONB and how can this help us understand the lack of wind farms in the area?

A
  • AONB = Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty
  • Protection status in the UK Government award areas of the countryside
  • Restricts activity and development in these areas in order to preserve them
  • Dorset AONB covers 40% of the county, including the Jurassic Coast (the UK’s only natural UNESCO World Heritage Site)
  • Helps us understand why there are no onshore or offshore wind farms, only 9 small solar farms and little EV charging infrastructure
38
Q

What is the Climate Change Act and how can this help us understand the switch to EVs?

A
  • Climate Change Act 2008 = A key piece of UK legislation that legally commits the UK to becoming net-zero on carbon emissions by 2050
  • Government set regular carbon budgets and implement policies to drive change
  • 2035 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles
  • Policy helps us to understand why people are starting to switch to driving EVs and hybrid vehicles
39
Q

What is the title to our human fieldwork enquiry?

A

Investigating climate change mitigation in Purbeck

40
Q

What is the hypothesis of the human fieldwork?

A

The community of Purbeck are actively supporting the us of renewable energy

41
Q

What method of primary data collection did we use in our human fieldwork enquiry?

A

Questionnaires with local residents

42
Q

What method of secondary data collection did we use in our human fieldwork enquiry?

A
  • Satellite images of properties to identify % solar panel use
  • Thematic maps showing EV charge point and commercial solar and wind farms
43
Q

How did we present the closed question data from our questionnaire and how did this help us?

A
  • Bar charts
  • Pie charts
  • Stacked bar charts
  • Visually represented our data allowing us to quantify how much local support there was for renewable energy
44
Q

What were cons of our data presentation for our human enquiry?

A
  • Did not allow us to incorporate the use of our open questions
  • It was difficult to present a large quantity of qualitative data, which we underused in our analysis
  • Only created 5 charts
  • Missed other interesting trends in our data such as how support for solar and wind farms varies by age group
45
Q

What does presenting data in a comparative bar chart in our human enquiry allow us to do?

A
  • Use our qualifying questions to plot our data by gender
  • Allowed us to identify that men were slightly less supportive of renewable energy than women
46
Q

What did calculating the % of people we surveyed who had solar panels show us?

A
  • 14% had solar panels installed
  • This could be linked to our mean calculation of solar panels of solar panel use from our 15 satellite photos presentation data which was just 10%
47
Q

What did using Excel to generate charts digitally do?

A
  • Significantly reduce the risk of human error when creating them
  • They were therefore a very accurate representation of the data recorded
48
Q

What did using stacked bar charts help us do?

A
  • Able to separate our data on use of EV and hybrid vehicles by age group
  • This allowed us to identify that the younger age groups were more actively supporting the switch to EV/hybrids
  • > 65 being very reluctant
49
Q

What percentage of people supported or strongly supported solar and wind farms?

A

50%

50
Q

What percentage of respondents knew about the 2035 ban on sale of new petrol and diesel cars?

A

57%

51
Q

What percentage of people interviewed were over 50 years old?

A

70%

52
Q

What are ways in which we could have improved our human enquiry?

A
  • Asked how far from Swanage centre they lived and include the question in the main table of questions
  • Insisted on equal proportions of the different age groups to ensure a representative sample