Field Study Protocol

Welcome to the Field Study Protocol page!! We're glad that you are interested in joining the World Wide Biome Project. The data that you collect, when posted with those from other biomes, will help people from all over the world learn about the diversity of our biosphere.

There are a variety of habitats within your biome that you may choose to study. Forests, meadows old fields, marshes, swamps and others all make excellent sites to study. In order to facilitate data input and comparison, members of the Project need to end up with data of comparable type. For this reason, regardless of your study method, you need to end up with some, or all , of the following data:

  1. a brief description of abiotic factors (soil, light, wind, moisture).
  2. the 4 most important arthropod/mammal/bird(or fish) species.
  3. the 4 most important tree/shrub/herb species.

You can see the exact data submission sheet if you go to the data entry page.

There are 2 different studies described below; a junior grade forest study, and a senior grade forest study. Either might be modified for a meadow study, and certainly the concepts of transects, quadrats and random samples could be applied to most field studies. Likewise, they might be adapted for younger or older grades. If you would like help designing a study for a your particular class, just send me an e-mail and I will send you a grade appropriate study, or work with you to design one to fit your class's ability. It is assumed that teachers will take appropriate safety considerations for studies in which ever area that they intend to study.

Junior Grade Forest Ecology Study: Field Work

Equipment

Abiotic Factors

  1. Break your class into groups of 4. Each group will be responsible for doing the field work that follows.
  2. Walk over the entire study area and become familiar with the boundries of the area. Make a map of the area if you do not have one already.
  3. Find a representative area of the forest. Each group shoul plot a transect (straight line) to go through the entire length of the site.
  4. Somewhere along the transect, randomly establish a spot to place a quadrat (study area). Make a 10m by 10m square quadrat for sampling tree species (trees with stem diameters 10 cm or greater). Mark the corners with flagging tape or ribbon. Within this make a 4m by 4m square quadrat for shrubs and saplings (woody stems less than 10cm in diameter). Within the large quadrat also make a 3rd quadrat, 1m by 1m for sampling herbaceous species (trillium/grass/mayflower) and for taking a soil sample.
  5. Within the 1m by 1m quadrat take a 500 ml sample of soil and seal it in a plastic bag (do not disturb any vegetation). Estimate the amount of sun available to the plants (full sun/moderate sun/little sun).
  6. Describe the topography and vegetation of the entire area. Locate your site on a topographic map and record its longitude and latitude.

  7. Biotic Factors: Animals

  8. While in the forest keep track of all bird sightings, calls or signs (woodpecker holes) and develop a list of species and numbers of individuals in the entire area.
  9. Record sightings of all mammals, calls (squirrels) or signs (vole tunnels in grass, shredded pine cones by red squirrels etc.) and develop a list of species and numbers of individuals for the entire area.
  10. Search the 10m by 10m quadrat for centipede/millipede/arachnid/insects/worms etc. This can be done by shaking vegetation over a white sheet, looking under leaves, and inspecting logs, rocks and soil. Use nets or jars, field guides and magnifying glasses for identification. Keep a tally of all species found.

  11. Biotic Factors: Plants

  12. Within the 10m by 10m quadrat identify every tree and keep a tally of the number of each species.
  13. Within the 4m by 4m quadrat identify every shrub species and sapling, and keep a tally of the number of each species.
  14. Within the 1m by 1m quadrat identify each hebaceous species and keep a tally of the number of each species. If a species is too numerous to count (like grass!!) make an estimate of how much of the quadrat it covered. (in square metres).

Junior Grade Forest Ecology Study: Class Work

Abiotic Factors

  1. Remove 100 g of soil from the sealed bag. Warm it gently for 3 days to evaporate all moisture. Record its mass. Heat it strongly in an oven to burn all organic matter (twigs, roots, leaves). Record its mass. Determine the % soil moisture and the % soil organic matter by the following formulae:
  2.  
  3. Average the results for the class.

  4. Biotic Factors: Animals

  5. Place all group data from the class regarding bird sightings together. Determine the 4 most commonly occurring bird species for the area. If birds were absent due to noise, or the time of day or year, determine from other resources what birds are most common in the area.
  6. Repeat the above step for mammal data.
  7. Repeat the above step for the invertebrates (insects etc) data.

  8. Biotic Factors: Plants

  9. Place all group data from the class regarding tree species together. Determine the 4 most commonly occurring tree species for the area.
  10. Repeat step 9 for the shrubs.
  11. Repeat step 9 for the herbaceous plants.

Senior Grade Forest Ecology Study: Field Work

Equipment

Abiotic Factors

  1. Break your class into groups of 4. Each group will be responsible for doing the field work that follows. Thus, a class of 32 students would end up with 8 transects (1 per group) and 8 nested quadrats (1 per group).
  2. Walk over the entire study area and become familiar with the boundries of the area. Make a map of the area if you do not have one already.
  3. Find a representative area of the forest. Plot a transect (straight line) to go through the entire length of the site.
  4. Somewhere along the transect, randomly establish a spot to place a quadrat (study area). You may want to "nest" the quadrats at this site. Make a 10m by 10m quadrat for sampling tree species (trees with stem diameters 10 cm or greater). Mark the corners with flagging tape or ribbon. Within this make a 4m by 4m quadrat for shrubs and saplings (woody stems less than 10cm in diameter). Within the large quadrat also make a 3rd quadrat, 1m by 1m for sampling herbaceous species (trillium/grass/mayflower) and for taking a soil sample.
  5. Within the 1m by 1m quadrat take a 500 ml sample of soil and seal it in a plastic bag (do not disturb any vegetation). Estimate the amount of sun available to the plants (full sun/moderate sun/little sun).
  6. Describe the topography and vegetation of the entire area. Locate your site on a topographic map and record its longitude and latitude.

  7. Biotic Factors: Animals

  8. While in the forest keep track of all bird sightings, calls or signs (woodpecker holes) and develop a list of species and numbers of individuals in the entire area.
  9. Record sightings of all mammals, calls (squirrels) or signs (vole tunnels in grass, shredded pine cones by red squirrels etc.) and develop a list of species and numbers of individuals for the entire area.
  10. Search the 10m by 10m quadrat for arthropods (centipede/millipede/arachnid/insects). This can be done by shaking vegetation over a white sheet, looking under leaves, and inspecting logs, rocks and soil. Use nets or jars, field guides and magnifying glasses for identification. Keep a tally of all species found.

  11. Biotic Factors: Plants

  12. Within the 10m by 10m quadrat identify every tree and keep a tally of the number of each species.
  13. Within the 4m by 4m quadrat identify every shrub species and sapling, and keep a tally of the number of each species.
  14. Within the 1m by 1m quadrat identify each hebaceous species and keep a tally of the number of each species. If a species is too numerous to count (like grass!!) make an estimate of its total cover (in square metres).

Senior Grade Forest Ecology Study: Lab Work

Abiotic Factors

  1. Remove 100 g of soil from the sealed bag. Warm it gently for 3 days to evaporate all moisture. Record its mass. Heat it strongly to burn all organic matter. Record its mass. Determine the % soil moisture and the % soil organic matter by the following formulae:
  2.  
  3. Average the results for the class.

  4. Biotic Factors: Animals

  5. Place all group data from the class regarding bird sightings together. Determine the 4 most commonly occurring bird species for the area. If birds were absent due to noise, or the time of day or year, determine from other resources what birds are most common in the area.
  6. Repeat the above step for mammal data.
  7. Repeat the above step for the arthropod data.

  8. Biotic Factors: Plants

  9. The most "important" tree species is the one that is both frequent in occurance and dense in number. To get numerically sound data copy field data from all 8 groups onto a chalk board. Use this class data from all 10 m by 10 m quadrats put together to determine the following for each tree species:
  10.  

    For example, from the following data:

    Field Study Data
    Quadrat #1 Quadrat #2
    12 sugar maples 8 sugar maples
    5 white oak 5 beech


  11. The importance value for each species of tree is calculated by:
  12.  

    Thus, the importance value (beech) would be:

  13. Group all the class data from the 4m by 4m quadrat. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for the shrub data.
  14. Group all the class data from the 1m by 1m quadrat. Repeat steps 6 and 7 for the hebaceous data. If you used cover instead of tally for a species, then estimate its importance value.

Home Joining Research Data Entry E-pals

 jhcordukes@airnet.ca