My final field project looked very different then my original study design. Originally, I wanted to investigate if distance from the Elbow River effected Balsam Poplar and White Spruce seedling density. I hypothesized that there was an ideal distance that would support the greatest density. However, as I progressed through the course my open learning faculty member and I altered the hypothesis to explore soil moisture. My altered study design investigated if soil moisture effects the density of Balsam Poplar and White Spruce seedlings. I aimed to determine if there was an optimal level for both species, at what soil moisture percentage were they unable to grow and if my results were significant. I discovered that within my site soil moisture did not significantly impact Balsam Poplar seedling density, but it did significantly impact the density of White Spruce seedlings. Within my site Balsam Poplar seedlings and White spruce seedling had respective optimal soil moisture percentages of 30%-45% and 40%-50%. The most difficult part of implementing the study design was navigating to the 50 random sites. However, as the data collection day went on, I got much quicker at following the google map directions.
This process has given me new appreciation for ecology-based research. This field seems to typically use natural experiments. This means it can be very hard or impossible to ensure independence, sufficient replication and/or limit confounding factors. Learning different methods and study designs that help limit these difficulties was really interesting. Additionally, I have a new appreciation for the time ecologists devote to their studies, as collecting sufficient replicates can be quite time consuming. Overall, I really enjoyed learning about the field and reading several ecology peer reviewed papers.