A second site visit was conducted to Stockley Open Space. Stockley Open Space is a 5.27 ha park in Kelowna, BC. A gravel walking trail runs through the middle of this park, and loops at the top, to allow visitor access.
The second site visit occurred on May 24, 2022 from 19:00 – 21:00. It was 10 degrees Celsius, and overcast with less than 1 mm of rain during the time of the visit.
Upon arrival, observations of plants in the park were continued. As stated in Blog Post 1 it was noted that there was many non-native plant species which appeared to have higher abundances near the walking trail. Three non-native species were particularly abundant along the trail: sulphur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta), Jim hill mustard (Sisymbrium altissimum), and corn gromwell (Buglossoides arvensis). It was observed that these three non-native species appeared to follow the trend of having a higher abundance nearest to the walking trail than at farther distances. To further investigate this observation, I decided to walk 10 m perpendicularly off the trail in the field portion of the park, at a random location along the trail. At this location there were clearly less of the three listed non-native species than at the trail edge. I walked another 10 m and found that again, these species appeared to be even less abundant then at the trail edge. The attached image of my field notes shows an example of this observation taken for sulphur cinquefoil. It should be noted that other non-native species were present in this area; however, they were either less abundant or not as readily identifiable for a beginner at vegetation identification.
My hypothesis would be that if an area is closer to the linear disturbance (walking trail), then it will have a higher abundance of non-native species. Thus, if I were to measure the abundance of these three species at a location closer to the trail, I would get a higher abundance than if I were to measure abundance at a location farther away from the trail. This hypothesis appears to agree with literature that studies the impact of roadways and other linear travel corridors on non-native species distribution.
Additionally, this observation seems logical since foot traffic along the trail may act as a vector to seed dispersal, which would allow for these non-native species to be tracked in from other areas and allow them to establish.
The response variable in this case would be the relative abundance (percent cover) of the non-native species, and the predictor variable would be the distance from the walking trail. The response variable would be a continuous variable, and the predictor variable would be discreet if the measurements of abundance were taken at set distances (e.g., 0 m, 10 m, and 20 m). For the study, I would likely choose two of the three species listed above and study their abundance in relation to distance.
The measurements would have to be taken on both sides of the trail to mitigate seeing impacts on abundance that are due to slope, instead of distance, as the trail bisects the hill which slopes from the east down towards the west.
