Blog Post 1: Observation
Date of Field Visit: March 28, 2023
Time: 0945 hr
Weather: Sunny and partly cloudy. High of -1 degrees celsius, and a low of -16 degrees celsius 14 km/hr wind, 74% humidity.
Temperature: -11 degrees Celsius, feels like -16 degrees Celsius.
Elevation: 672.9 m
Location: Sherwood Park, AB
Designation: Privately owned
Coordinates: 53.587889, -113.221099
The pond that I will be doing my observation for my field project is located in a pasture that I board my horses at during the summer. It is on private land, and I have the land owners permission. As you can tell in the picture the pond is currently covered in snow. Vegetation and organisms that occupy the pond are unknown as of right now. The land surrounding the pasture is used as farmland, in the past it was a canola field. It is composed of flat topography with few trees (pine and ash). The pond is oval in shape 16m x 12m, and is just east of the range road. There is a house, and a half round within a close proximity pond.
Interesting/Striking Questions:
1- What waterfowl use this small body of water?
2- What kind of vegetation grows here in mid-late spring?
3- Do other animals (such as the horses, and coyotes) use this pond, and what impact does it have on the pond?
Figure 1.1, and 1.2 are taken from google maps so that other people can get a better understanding for the layout of the property. These pictures are taken 10 years ago.
Figure 1.1- The pond I will be doing my field project on
Figure 1.2- A larger view of the area
Figure 1.3- The pond when I visited it today (March 28, 2023).
Hi, welcome to the field project. I like your study site though it looks like a small pond so you will have to think about how to do multiple samples. Is it big enough to have a gradient? That is something you will have to think about for your next post. You will also have to expand your questions so that they are asking about how something works/changes/interacts in the ecosystem vs. about the natural history of the pond (questions 1 and 2). Question 3 starts to get at an interaction though you will be starting to learn about hypotheses and predictions and thinking about what is possible to test in your study.