The following graph is a visual representation of the plant community structure by vegetative structural layer I found at my site. I really like this graph as I think it is a great visual representation of the data I found. This graph has my “manipulated” data. Basically, I recorded all vegetation by structural layer in the field (ground level, veg layers 1 thru 3 (however many structural layer “hits” were found), and top canopy). I then took veg layers 1 and 2 and classified those as understory and then veg layer 3 and the top canopy as overstory. I did this because on the North-facing aspects, there were instances where there were two distinct layers of shrubs, one layer below hip height and one over my head. For the south-facing aspect, all the vegetation was below hip height, so in this manipulated data graph, I put all the vegetation below hip height as understory and then anything taller than hip height in the overstory. Because the south-facing aspect only had vegetation less than hip height, it shows on the graph as having no overstory.
In my report, I have included two graphs, one with the data represented as recorded in the field and this one. Between the two it’s clear that although the south-facing aspect technically has an overstory, it is much different than that of the north-facing overstory and thus the plant community structure is also much different.
The outcome of my data was as predicted – that on average, the south-facing aspect had one less structural layer than that of the north-facing aspect. The most time consuming part of the data compilation was just getting the field notes into an excel file so I could use coding to simplify, organize and manipulate it for graphs and tables. Because there are so many attributes, the coloring of the graph was time consuming as well as the initial auto-generate graph had a lot of similar colors, so it was hard to tell apart the different plants.
Figure 3 Plant community structure with all vegetation less than 1m in height (below hip height) classified as understory and all vegetation taller than hip height classified as overstory.
(sorry it’s blurry, it wouldn’t let me insert my graph directly so I had to take a screenshot of it).
Hey Hstrong,
You are right, that is a beautiful representation of the data you collected!
A very interesting approach to evaluating (“manipulating” as you say) the data so that it is broken down in a way that it remains relevant.
Also fantastic that you have some coding skills to help you with data entry: transferabble skills for the win! 🙂
All the best,
Joel