Blog Post #3 Gold Park

For my ecological survey I decided to go to Gold Park, just up the street from the EDCC campus. At this park I noticed that a good majority of the plants at the front of the park were dead, there were many trees surrounding the area, the ground was covered in moss and twigs. I decided to record the Sword Fern for my survey. Throughout the site the number of organisms I found on average in each quadrant was 1.91. The ferns were more abundant in the beginning of my transect, the maximum being 4 stems. As I worked my way across, the number became lower due to fallen trees preventing them from growing in some areas. I believe that the transect does represent the population because throughout the entire park they are present, it’s almost as if the ferns are invasive. I also believe that the population is connected. While viewing the area as a whole I realized that sword ferns thrive in areas covered by more trees, there were just enough breaks in the trees that they are able to receive rain and sunlight to grow but they still remain protected by harsh heat due to the shade of the fir trees. Swords ferns are an organism that has been well adjusted to its environment allowing it to be abundant throughout the entire park. A population like this can be used to determine the conditions it is growing in that allows it to be successful.

Quadrant	Organisms
1	4
2	3
3	2
4	3
5	2
6	2
7	1
8	2
9	1
10	1
11	0
12	0