Recent Posts

Sampling Strategies

The community I sampled for this exercise was the Snyder- Middleswarth Natural Area. I chose to use area sampling rather than distance sampling since it is more relevant to my…

Post 3: Ongoing Field Observations

Blog Post 3: Ongoing Field Observations Study Plan                 I plan to study the effect of dry season watering on the growth of saprophytic fungi in the winter.  My research…

Blog Post 9: Field Research Reflections

What a journey! I’ve finally come to the end of my field research experiment and it was certainly a valuable experience. I really enjoyed working through the entire process of…

Blog Post 2: Sources of Scientific Information (Field Guides)

Dickinson M, editor. 1999. Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Third Edition. Washington (DC): National Geographic Society. I was somewhat surprised to find this book is non-academic material,…

Post 1: Observations Bowen Park Forest

  My sample site is the “wild” parts of Bowen Park in Nanaimo, BC. It’s a forest located on a 36 hectare parcel of land along the Millstone River. Much…

BP #7: Theoretical Perspectives

My research project is based around investigating whether there is a relationship between the height of a snowberry bush and its berry load.  I am interested in whether the taller…

BP #6: Data Collection

I completed my data collection across 3 sampling trips in late October and November (not counting the initial data collection).  I was careful to complete my data collection before the…

Post 4: Sampling strategies

Systematic, Random and Haphazard sampling techniques were used in the area-based method in the virtual forest tutorial. The systematic approach was most effective in terms of timing. The Random was…

Ongoing field observation

I visited my backyard for a second observation on October 5th, and the temperature was 14c; the third time was on October 13th, and the temperature was 10c. I focused…

Blog Post #6: Data Collection

Blog Post 6: Data Collection Data collection: My approach to data collection has been systematic as random selection does not apply well to the setting of my project and haphazard…