While revisiting the spawning channels I became aware of how many different bird species were present and how abundant fish carcasses were throughout the channels.
I identified three different areas where water pools and slows and tried to identify the species present (species diversity) and overall number of individuals. This can be seen reflected in my observations. Pond was leading in both number of fish carcasses in the water and total number of birds and bird species. There are a few bird I have yet to identify but next time I visit I will be looking to compare them to the descriptions of the Hooded Merganser. There is also another eagle present but after doing some research into bald eagles I believe that the eagles I thought were golden eagles are actually juvenile bald eagles.
I would like to study the species diversity of the bird in this area. Originally I thought I would want to study the fish, but this will prove difficult without being able to catch the individuals and identify the remains.
As I got further away from the golf course, to the north of the channels, I became aware of an inconsistent popping noise that grew louder as I neared ponds two and three. After leaving the area I checked online and discovered that there is a shoot range on the opposite side of the Mamquam river from the spawning channels. I would like to do research into the effects of anthropogenic noise pollution on species richness. I hypothesize that the closer to anthropogenic audio disturbance each zone is, the lower species richness will be. The predictor variable will be distance from the shooting range, which is continuous. The response variable will be species richness which is continuous. This will result in a regression design for this study.
So, sounds like transect(s) or something similar will be how you demonstrate distance from the shooting range? If your transects are long, you can use apps on your phone rather than running a tape. Are you thinking something like point counts for species richness and focusing on birds?
I think that point counts would be the most realistic way for me to be able to complete this on my own. That being said, should there be multiple point counts over multiple days to show the impact that the activity level of the shooting range has? Although, I’m not sure how complicated that would get to analyze for the final paper. Pond 3 is the closest to the shooting range and I could absolutely use google maps and other apps to identify locations for point counts after this ‘starting’ point. Since it seems that the birds tend to congregate at the bodies of water I figured I’d do my point counts at each of the three ponds, but would it make more sense to do point counts every after every increment 20m (for example) from the range?