Experimental design: field experiment

The experiment was conducted in a woodlot located at the Keele campus of York University in Toronto, Ontario. It was conducted on the 15th and 22nd of October 2014 between 2:45pm and 4:30pm and the weather was cloudy with light precipitation. The only equipment required for the complete execution of the experiment was two 25m transect tapes and the chosen tree sample was a sugar maple tree (Acer Saccharum).First randomly place the 25m transect measuring tape from the edge of the woodlot (defined as the first tree you encounter as you enter the woodlot) to the centre, then at every instance we encounter an adult tree (defined as a tree twice the height of the students conducting the experiment) along the transect tape on both sides, various measurements were taken. First the distance on the transect tape where each sample maple tree was found was recorded then the dbh of the sample maple tree was also obtained using the second 25m transect tape. The distances from the maple tree to the three closest adult trees were obtained and recorded then the arithmetic mean of those distances was used to estimate the density of that specific maple tree. This was repeated for a total sample size of 30 transects.