I went back to Father Hennepin park to continue my observations on June 5, 2022 in the late afternoon (4 p.m. to 5 p.m.). The weather was around 21 C and partially cloudy for the duration of my observations.
I decided to do an ecological gradient of tree crown cover. The highest level of crown cover was a 4 and my lowest was a 1. The high cover area was towards the entrance of the park near a very small stream, the mid cover area was near the waterfall, and the low cover area was near a larger river that feeds into the Mississippi. At each site, I measured the vertebrate diversity over the course of 20 minutes. I only saw birds at each site, and only identified birds when I saw them to avoid biasing my observations with multiple recordings of a single bird calling multiple times. I then calculated the Shannon Weaver diversity index of each site.
For the high cover site, the Shannon Weiner diversity index was 1.61, the mid cover was 1.39, and the low cover was 1.89. One important thing to note is that both the low and high cover sites were farther from human interventions, such as bridges, pathways, and man-made waterfalls. This might drive animals away from these areas. The river also likely draws animals to it for foraging, while the heavily covered area provides more areas for birds to hide.
From these new observations, I hypothesize that areas with lower human intervention have greater species diversity than areas with high human intervention. I predict that I will observe a greater number of species in areas father from man-made structures within the park than at areas that are fragmented by many man-made objects.
One explanatory variable is distance from man-made habitat features. A response variable would then be the biodiversity (measured by the Shannon Weiner index) of the area.
Isaac Hudson Foy
