Lab Techniques for finding traits of plants: Woodlot data set 4 Silver Maple mature trees and saplings

The data was collected on Monday September 21, 2015 from 3:00pm to 5:30pm at York University’s Danby Woodlot. It was a sunny day, very little cloud and hardly any wind. Data that was collected was diameter at breast height of mature trees and saplings, canopy coverage of trees and distance to nearest sapling. My partners Mustafa Alan and Krystal Nguyen and I collected the data. Discussion of how to proceed with the collecting the data took place in the lumbers building at York University, room 119. I chose woodlot data set 4 using the transect method and Mustafa chose grassland data set 2, we both helped each other collect data for both sets. My partners and I walked to Danby Woodlot with the rest of Lab 1, we found a clearing with minimal trees and labeled this the middle of the woodlot. From this mid-point Mustafa placed a transect down and measured out to the other end straight across till it reached the opening of the woodlot facing York University. The types of trees were observed and silver maple trees were the most abundant so this was chosen as the sample. 10 randomly selected silver maple trees found along the transect were used. Mustafa Alan took measurements and I observed and recorded the data. Starting with tree one closest to the middle of the woodlot, diameter at breast height (inches) was measured with another transect. The second step was making a square with our hands and determining the coverage (%) that the sample tree gave off (note: that the tree could have had over 100% coverage as some of the canopies of the trees overlap). We then observed where the nearest sapling was located to the mature sample tree and Mustafa measured the distance between the two (note: less than the height of two average people, determines a sapling). The last step was taking down the diameter of the sapling as well using a transect. These steps were repeated for all 10 silver maple trees selected along the transect. Data was recorded on a table in my notebook and then transferred to a Microsoft excel spreadsheet that also displayed meta-data for each variable. The data was collected for Ecology 2050 Lab 2 group 1 and the purpose of collecting this data was to gain skills in ecological experimentation and methods of collecting field data, displaying this data, and communication through descriptions and meta-data.