Lab 2 - 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.本实验于2015年9月22日15:40至16:18，与搭档穆罕默德（Mohammed）在约克大学丹比树林草地区域开展。当日天气晴朗，气温稳定维持在20℃。该草地的地形以丛生分布的低矮植被为主，区域内植被群落密集。本次研究借助Random.org平台生成1至20的随机数，用以确定相邻两个样方(quadrat)之间的步行步数，以此规避抽样偏差。该采样流程共重复25次：前13次重复采样沿正西方向进行，后12次则沿正东方向开展。每次将样方放置于地面后，均记录如下观测数据：i）逐一手动计数的植物总个体丰度；ii）经分类鉴定并手动计数的植物物种总数；iii）通过目视结合相对评估估算得到的植被总盖度及草本植物盖度。