I area for my research I have chosen is a part of Cambridge Street, a city side street, as the location for my natural history observations. This place is closer to where I live and is in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The approximate size of the study area I will using for my project is 488m. The street is characterized by a flat topography with sidewalks on both sides. The vegetation consists mainly of ornamental trees included green ash, Blue Spruce etc. The designation of this area is that of a city street within the urban landscape.
I visited the site on March 7th, 2024, at around 1730hrs. It has recently snowed, and the weather was -10 Celsius (Feels like -14 Celsius). The entire street was covered with snow.
Possible research questions which are quite striking to me are:
1) How can the snow affect the health of Green Ash trees?
2) Is there any notable difference in the soil quality due to the presence of green ash trees?
3) Growth of moss and lichens were seen in the cracks on the bark of the green ash tree. Is there any notable difference in the growth of the those on the different trees located along the length of the street.
Hi, welcome to the field portion of the course! Urban environments can still be great sources for a study! One thing to think about as you work through the next few modules is what your gradient here is along this street. Also, you will start to think in terms of questions you can answer in this course. For example, snow on tree health could be tricky as tree health is often measured over time. Also, for both questions 1 and 2 other factors could influence tree health or soil quality. For soil, given it is an artificial environment, did they put soil where the trees were initially whereas other areas may not have that? Having said that, your questions are good for this stage of the course and you will start to think more deeply as you get into the experimental design a bit more.