Physical Fieldwork Flashcards
What was the title of your physical fieldwork?
Investigate the effect of trampling on the abundance and diversity of vegetation at Reigate Heath, Surrey
What was your primary data source?
Quadrat sampling to find the percentage cover of vegetation, species count and height of tallest species.
Did you use any secondary data?
Yes we had a talk from an Old Reigaitian who was a keen environmentalist. The talk by Simon Elton was on the the threats and conservation issues for this fragile environment.
What theories were you testing?
Changes that effect the ecosystem balance, food webs, conflicting land uses, vegetation succession, environmental sustainability and environmental carrying capacity.
What was included in your risk assessment?
1) The risks of tripping or injury from tree stumps and uneven ground.
2) Risk of being bitten by an adder.
3) The risk of being being by a tick.
4) Adverse weather causing injury by lightning, falling branches or hypothermia.
How did you control the injury risk of tree stumps?
1) Safety instructions
2) Appropriate footwear
3) No running
4) Keep working areas tidy
5) Carry mobile phone for emergency use
6) First aid kit and first aide always present
What controls were in place for adder bites?
1) Contact site manager in advance to check on likelihood
2) Call dial 999 if bitten
3) Tell all students of risk
4) Move slowly around the site to give adders time to react and move away
What control measures did you put in place for adverse weather?
1) Suitable clothing and footwear.
2) Stay inside if storms present
3) Adapt activities outside if really bad weather
What equipment did you use to investigate?
1) Tape measure
2) Quadrat
How did you collect the data?
Measured 20m across an area that included a footpath.
A quadratic was placed on the floor and the following data was collected:
1) The percentage of vegetation inside the quadrat.
2) Number of different species.
3) Height of tallest plant.
I repeated this every metre in the 20m area so that we have 20 separate data recordings.
What was the sampling method called?
Regular systematic approach. This just means we measured the quadrat every meter.
Why was this type of sampling good?
1) Allowed us to study across a wide (20m) area.
2) Inexpensive
This type OA approach works well to study vegetation distribution patterns.
Are there any problems with this type of sampling?
1) It’s only an estimate
2) Degree of error involved
3) Subjective assessment by one person
4) Measurement error
5) Bare ground and vegetation difficult to separate with plants resting horizontally
How did you present the data?
Using
1) a kite diagram. This shows between 0% and 100% of vegetation cover at each of the 20 meter measurement points
2) Use of ArcGIS. This showed vegetation type using proportional circles
What did the kite diagram show?
1) There was very little vegetation until you were 9m away from the path.
2) The further you got from the path the more vegetation cover there was
What are the advantages of using kite diagrams?
1) Useful to display changes over distance
2) Visually clear, easy to interpret one category from another
3) Easy comparisons
What are the disadvantages of kite diagrams
1) Visually subjective as scale influences the effect
2) Only works with specific range of data
3) Time consuming to construct by hand
What are the advantages of using ArcGIS?
Allows data to plotted onto a map which gives good visual representation of vegetation coverage
What are the disadvantages of ArcGIS?
Proportional circles can all blur together making it difficult to read.
Advantages and disadvantages of using mean?
Adv - All data is used
Disadvantage - Very large or small data distort the answer
Advantages and disadvantages of using median
Adv - Not impacted by very large or small outlying data.
Disadvantage- Takes time to calculate
Advantage and disadvantage of mode?
Adv - useful when data is not numerical.
Disadvantage- May be more than one mode, may be no mode, may not accurately represent the data
What anomalies were there in the test?
Tree stumps in the way.
Tree roots through sample area.
What was your conclusion?
1) Percentage vegetation increases as you move away from the footpath.
2) This is likely to be due to human usage concentrated near the footpath with dog walkers and members of the public.
What problems did you have and how would you improve?
1) Difficult to estimate percentage vegetation within quadrant.
2) Only carried out one time in the year. Heath users are more active in the Summer
3) Only sampled 20m transects line given time constraints. Would enlarge to 30m.
