Blog post 3:
- Identify the organism or biological attribute that you plan to study.
Impacts on Purple Camas with increasing abundance of invasive species present within Gary Oak Ecosystems.
- Use your field journal to document observations of your organism or biological attribute along an environmental gradient. Choose at least three locations along the gradient and observe and record any changes in the distribution, abundance, or character of your object of study.
- I have observed an increase of invasive species surrounding trails and infrastructure.
- Within areas near heavily trafficked trails with higher densities of invasive species, there are also less diversity of native species.
- Think about underlying processes that may cause any patterns that you have observed. Postulate one hypothesis and make one formal prediction based on that hypothesis. Your hypothesis may include the environmental gradient; however, if you come up with a hypothesis that you want to pursue within one part of the gradient or one site, that is acceptable as well.
- Foot traffic
- Human infrastructure
Hypothesis: Heavily trafficked trails surrounding Mount Douglas Park, experience increased spread and presence of invasive species. With this increased seed dispersal, there is increased impacts on rare and endangered species.
- Based on your hypothesis and prediction, list one potential response variable and one potential explanatory variable and whether they would be categorical or continuous. Use the experimental design tutorial to help you with this.
Response variable: Native species precent cover decrease, and invasive species density increase.
- Continuous
Explanatory variable: Distance to highly trafficked trails, and human infrastructure
- Categorical
might need to wordsmith this a bit: Impacts on Purple Camas with increasing abundance of invasive species present within Gary Oak Ecosystems -> not sure 100% what is meant here ; )
I think what you are saying is: you observed that in heavier trafficked areas there is more disturbance and increased cover / presence of Invasives (?)
yes likely seeds are brought in, and/or ground is disturbed so seed bed is available
cover% is okay variable but with a plant with a very large canopy the percent will be high, but doesn’t necessarily mean that there are more plants. Would presence/absence be a good metric?