Blog #3, Meadowdale Beach Park
I visited Meadowdale Beach Park, one of my favorite parks, for this survey. I stopped approximately 300m down the trail, uphill from a stream that runs through the park. The area caught my eye due to two fairly large, dead stumps that both had new trees growing around and out of them. Other than these features, the area I chose is very similar to most of Meadowdale. Generally damp soil embedded with rocks, dense ground cover containing both ferns and vines, tall, thin shrubs ~6-9' (unable to categorize), and a population of trees essentially made up of Douglas Firs, oaks (unable to categorize), and Big Leaf Maples.
This is my expert artist's rendition of the site as well as a symbol key.
The organism I decided to measure along my transect was the Western Sword Fern (polystichum munitum) as they were the most abundant plant on the site. There were an average of three per quadrat, and they were distributed somewhat evenly throughout the 12 measurements taken. Since the ferns were pretty sizeable the quadrat itself wasn't extremely useful, and I ended up counting ferns that had leaves touching/ were close to the fern that the quadrat was on. Without doing this I think the measurement would not have been representative of the site. Another problem I ran into was the large amount of vines and other ground cover I had to go through to stay on my transect. They were constantly catching me, and they obscured divits and holes in the ground. I was slightly surprised at the average, as I thought it would be a slightly larger number. But after review, it makes sense since there's paths, shrubs, and other ground cover that disrupts the density of the ferns. In respect to there being multiple populations of ferns, I'm not entirely sure. There's so many all around Meadowdale that it's hard to believe there wouldn't be multiple populations, but due to that same reason, it would be very hard to tell where one group starts and another begins. The transect and quadrat technique itself was interesting. I found it rather cumbersome having to go straight across the site, but I can see how that contributes to the sample being accurate. As I mentioned before, the quadrat was a bit small for the organism I was sampling, and it made me wonder how this method is applied to other larger organisms. Perhaps one would just scale it up. Other than that, I think it was a good experience and I enjoyed the opportunity to go to my favorite park in the area.
The organism I decided to measure along my transect was the Western Sword Fern (polystichum munitum) as they were the most abundant plant on the site. There were an average of three per quadrat, and they were distributed somewhat evenly throughout the 12 measurements taken. Since the ferns were pretty sizeable the quadrat itself wasn't extremely useful, and I ended up counting ferns that had leaves touching/ were close to the fern that the quadrat was on. Without doing this I think the measurement would not have been representative of the site. Another problem I ran into was the large amount of vines and other ground cover I had to go through to stay on my transect. They were constantly catching me, and they obscured divits and holes in the ground. I was slightly surprised at the average, as I thought it would be a slightly larger number. But after review, it makes sense since there's paths, shrubs, and other ground cover that disrupts the density of the ferns. In respect to there being multiple populations of ferns, I'm not entirely sure. There's so many all around Meadowdale that it's hard to believe there wouldn't be multiple populations, but due to that same reason, it would be very hard to tell where one group starts and another begins. The transect and quadrat technique itself was interesting. I found it rather cumbersome having to go straight across the site, but I can see how that contributes to the sample being accurate. As I mentioned before, the quadrat was a bit small for the organism I was sampling, and it made me wonder how this method is applied to other larger organisms. Perhaps one would just scale it up. Other than that, I think it was a good experience and I enjoyed the opportunity to go to my favorite park in the area.
I have been to Meadowdale Beach Park but never really stopped to think about what kind of organisms were along the trail. I agree with you that though the transect process was a little awkward, it's plain to see how it would get more accurate results. I also observed the sword fern at the park that I was at, it was really interesting to see just how abundant they are!
ReplyDeleteCool survey, would be great to see your data table of how many your found per quadrat. Also what was your average per quadrat?
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