Density of Vegetation According to Light Abundance in Habitats

On October 19th and 26th from 3:30-5:30pm, a field experiment was conducted in the Danby Woods of York Uiversity. Weather conditions were sunny, few clouds, and slightly windy around 14-16 degrees Celsius. The grassland was a field with overgrown grass and plantlife and few tress. The woodland was densely populated with trees and mosty covered by leaves in the air space. The purpose of this experiment was to find any correlation between light coverage or habitat and density of vegetation through the quadrat sampling technique. An hypothesis set for this experiment is that the amount of sunlight able to reach a particular area would be due to lack of obstruction of the light coming in. With sunlight, the prediction is that the grasslands will have a larger density of vegetation due to minimum obstruction by trees as opposed to the woodlot. The environment plays a factor in the density of vegetation due to an obstruction of large trees and thereby sunlight and nutrients for the smaller plant life to grow. The prediction here is that the woodlot will have a lower density of vegetation due to the amount of tall trees and canopy coverage. Otherwise, a null hypothesis would state that there is no difference between the abundance of vegetation in both habitats. This dataset shows the abundance of vegetation in each habitat within 100 quadrat trials. The sampling process was done using the quadrat sampling technique and random number generating. A random number between 1-20 was chosen in order to count the number of steps to take and another generator between 1-4 used to determine the direction (1 = North, 2 = East, 3 = South, 4 = West) then a quadrat was placed at the distace chosen by the generator. Once the quadrat is placed, first the vegetation abundance was estimated as a percentage based on the vegetation within the quadrat and determining which was dead (bronlimp) or alive (green and upright). Those that are viable were counted as a percentage of abundance. Light abundance was calculated using a 1x1m blank piece of cardboard. The cardboard was placed inside the quadrat facing the sky with sunlight shown onto it. Where there was sunlight with no shadow, sunlight coverage was estimated into a percentage. This process was repeated 50 times for the grassland habitat and 50 times for the woodlot habitat on October 19, 2015 and repeated an additional 50 times for each habitat on October 26, 2015. Lab performed with group members Felicia O., Richer L., Dylan C.,Brandon B., and Alex D. split into teams.