Dale Way Park, Blog #3

I went to Dale Way Park, 19015 64th Ave W, Lynnwood, WA, 98036. Dale Way Park is very green. The park woods are filled with trees and plants that surround the playground, water pad, basketball court, bathrooms, and nature trails. There is also an open grass field. The open grass fields were muddy, due to the down pour earlier that day. The trails are dirt, but were not muddy at all. I think all of the tall trees blocked the paths from becoming flooded. Acorns and fallen leaves lay all around the ground. I only saw two fallen trees that have begun to rot. One tree looked as if it had snapped. The trunk of that tree remains grounded but has hollowed out. The whole park seems to be "native"; however, there are some young Douglas Fir trees that planted along the trails. I saw one birds nest up high in a spruce tree, but no birds seemed to be flying to and from it. Squirrels freely roamed around the park. I chose the blackberry as my organism. The blackberry plants cover a vast majority of the park. They grow on on all of the fences that surround the nature trails. For my transect sample, I placed my hula hoop vertically on the ground, leaning up against the bush. I counted and recorded the blackberries that were on the surface of the bush. The average number of blackberries in my quadrat was 22.0833. From beginning to end, the blackberries were distributed in small clumps. I think the transect does represent this site because of how present blackberries are at the site. It was hard to be persistent with the "5 steps in between each trial", so I did 5 vertical hula hoop rotations instead. My sampling tells me that blackberries are common throughout Dale Way Park. I sampled one population, but there are multiple through out the park. I think there are multiple because of how the plants grow and cover land, and because of the seeds that are spread by animals and humans who eat them. Nothing really surprised me about this technique, I predicted the count of blackberries in the park would be fairly large. I think surveys like this can be helpful because it is impossible to count every single organism in an area. By using this type of survey, we can get an idea/estimate of how many there might be.
Trial 1: 20                                                   Trial 7: 35
Trial 2: 18                                                   Trial 8: 19
Trial 3: 17                                                   Trial 9: 16
Trial 4: 23                                                   Trial 10: 27
Trial 5: 22                                                   Trial 11: 20
Trial 6: 17                                                   Trial 12: 31