Blog post 5: design reflections

Did you have any difficulties in implementing your sampling strategy? What were these difficulties?

Yes. What I struggled the most with was designing a sampling strategy that would be appropriate for the type of distribution that the Snowberry plant showed in this particular area. I chose the distance-based random strategy, which I think was the right idea, but I didn’t execute it well. I wanted to collect data on Snowberry in all levels of incident light, but I found it difficult to pinpoint how exactly I could do that. I  divided the area into four sections (north-, south-, east- and west-facing) because each section seemed to show different canopy levels (and therefore levels of incident light received throughout the day). After careful consideration, I think this was a mistake because there are different canopy classes within each section, so the direction the section is facing was somewhat irrelevant.

Was the data that you collected surprising in any way?

Some data was quite surprising to me, because there was a significant variance in snowberry size across one class of canopy cover, which was not the case in the other two classes.

Do you plan to continue to collect data using the same technique, or do you need to modify your approach? (Explain briefly how you think your modification will improve your research).

I will slightly modify my sampling technique. I still plan on using the distance-based random technique, but I will use the canopy cover level rather than divide the area into sections facing different directions. By doing this, I can pick an equal number of samples in each canopy class, which should make my analysis more balanced and accurate.