Sampling Plant Populations and Communities Using a Quadrat in the Grasslands

This Experiment was conducted on September 22, 2015 from, 3:40pm to 4:18pm, at Danby Woods, York University grassland area with my partner, Mohammed. The weather consisted of sunny skies and a steady temperature of 20°C. The grassland terrain mostly consisted of low leveled vegetation which was found in clusters abundant in the area. Using Random.org, a number was randomly generated from 1-20 to determine how many steps were needed to take in between each quadrat in order to eliminate the potential for bias. This was repeated 25 times, the first 13 replicates were taken West in direction, and the last 12 replicates were taken towards the East in direction. Each time the quadrat was placed on the ground a few observations were noted; i) the total abundance of plants which were manually counted one at a time, ii) total number of plant species-classified and counted manually iii) the total coverage of vegeation as well as total coverage of grasses which was approximated by the eye and relativity.