Emily Browne
During my field data collection, I used 5 transects, each transect has 5 quadrats along it on alternating sides, for a total of 25 quadrats. I was measuring the mature trees that fell within the quadrats. The first transect had 17 trees, the second transect had 17 mature trees, transect three had 15 trees, transect 4 had 11 trees, and quadrat 5 had 22 trees, for a total of 82 mature trees in the study. Each tree had the stem diameter measured and was identified to species level.
I struggled to maintain direction over very large transects. Due to the size of the study subject (mature trees), the quadrats were 10m by 10 m and 5 occurred along the transect, each spaced 10m from each other, so the transects are 1 km each, and staying in a straight line over uneven terrain was difficult. Additionally, I am interested in investigating the relationship between the tree stem diameter and species to the elevation increase along the transects. However, mature forests are very heterogeneous and the slopes are not always consistent, I was not able to get an accurate elevation reading at each quadrat on a satellite GSP due to the dense trees so a consistent slope has to be assumed.
There may be a relationship between the elevation and the tree density within the quadrats. The preliminary data does not seem to reveal a pattern with stem diameter, species, and elevation. The preliminary data rejects the hypothesis so far but more detailed investigations into the data will be needed to confirm this.