Observations of forest area on East end of York University Keele campus

At York University, Keele campus, on Friday, September 26, 2014, a study site was located near a parking lot on the eastern end of the campus. The study site had a grassland area and a forested area which bordered each other. There was minimal cloud coverage and the temperature during the study was reasonably warm (23 degrees Celcius). Within the forested area, the distribution of adult trees and their saplings were observed and their diameter at breast height was observed in relation to their canopy size. This was done by first identifying the forest edge as the place where the grassland stopped and the first adult tree observed along the forest edge was use as the starting tree. Using the first adult tree (dbh ≥ 20 cm) to mark the forest edge, a group of 3 (Cait Carew, Lilach Halevi, and Nitharsija Srikanthan) took a measurement from the base of that tree to the base of the nearest adult tree using a transect measuring tape. At this tree, the tape measure was wrapped around the tree at breast height (around 1.3 m above ground) in order to measure the tree diameter. Trees were not considered adults if their diameter at breast height was less than 20cm. The trees were ranked on a scale of 0-2 to identify them as being dead (0), alive (1), and having a dense canopy (2). The distance between the first adult tree to the next closest tree was measured using the transect measuring tape along the forest floor from the base of one tree to the base of the other. The above process was repeated until 20 trees were sampled in this way.

Beech (Fagus) trees were chosen as the tree type of interest for the next study. It was identified by its leaves which are characteristically serrated around the edges and are shaped similar to teardrops. Starting from the edge of the forest, sampling started with the first visible adult Fagus. The diameter at breast height was recorded at this tree, and the canopy density was recorded. The canopy was observed by creating a square shape with fingers and orienting them up toward the sky. The relative canopy coverage was estimated by observing the amount of leaf coverage within the square shape. From the base of the adult Fagus, the nearest sapling was identified by observing the forest floor around the base of the tree. Some saplings were very close to the base of the tree, however, as the diameter at breast height of the sapling was required, saplings below breast height were not considered. The distance between the base of the adult tree and the base of the nearest sapling (with a height that reached a minimum of breast height) was measured using a tape measure. The diameter of the sapling was measured at breast height in the same way as the adult trees. The above process was repeated until 10 adult and sapling pairs were sampled.