Physical Fieldwork

Question 1

What was the title of your physical fieldwork?

Answer 1

Investigate the effect of trampling on the abundance and diversity of vegetation at Reigate Heath, Surrey

Question 2

What was your primary data source?

Answer 2

Quadrat sampling to find the percentage cover of vegetation, species count and height of tallest species.

Question 3

Did you use any secondary data?

Answer 3

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.

Question 4

What theories were you testing?

Answer 4

Changes that effect the ecosystem balance, food webs, conflicting land uses, vegetation succession, environmental sustainability and environmental carrying capacity.

Question 5

What was included in your risk assessment?

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

How did you control the injury risk of tree stumps?

Answer 6

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

Question 7

What controls were in place for adder bites?

Answer 7

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

Question 8

What control measures did you put in place for adverse weather?

Answer 8

1) Suitable clothing and footwear.
2) Stay inside if storms present
3) Adapt activities outside if really bad weather

Question 9

What equipment did you use to investigate?

Answer 9

1) Tape measure

2) Quadrat

Question 10

How did you collect the data?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

What was the sampling method called?

Answer 11

Regular systematic approach. This just means we measured the quadrat every meter.

Question 12

Why was this type of sampling good?

Answer 12

1) Allowed us to study across a wide (20m) area.
2) Inexpensive
This type OA approach works well to study vegetation distribution patterns.

Question 13

Are there any problems with this type of sampling?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

How did you present the data?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

What did the kite diagram show?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What are the advantages of using kite diagrams?

Answer 16

1) Useful to display changes over distance
2) Visually clear, easy to interpret one category from another
3) Easy comparisons

Question 17

What are the disadvantages of kite diagrams

Answer 17

1) Visually subjective as scale influences the effect
2) Only works with specific range of data
3) Time consuming to construct by hand

Question 18

What are the advantages of using ArcGIS?

Answer 18

Allows data to plotted onto a map which gives good visual representation of vegetation coverage

Question 19

What are the disadvantages of ArcGIS?

Answer 19

Proportional circles can all blur together making it difficult to read.

Question 20

Advantages and disadvantages of using mean?

Answer 20

Adv - All data is used

Disadvantage - Very large or small data distort the answer

Question 21

Advantages and disadvantages of using median

Answer 21

Adv - Not impacted by very large or small outlying data.

Disadvantage- Takes time to calculate

Question 22

Advantage and disadvantage of mode?

Answer 22

Adv - useful when data is not numerical.

Disadvantage- May be more than one mode, may be no mode, may not accurately represent the data

Question 23

What anomalies were there in the test?

Answer 23

Tree stumps in the way.

Tree roots through sample area.

Question 24

What was your conclusion?

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

What problems did you have and how would you improve?

Answer 25

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.