Required Practical 07: Field Investigations

Part 1:

1. Measure the area of the field that your class are going to investigate. (record this and take great care of the units).

2. Calculate and record the area of your quadrat (again, care with units).

3. Throw the quadrat to at least 10 places on the field (random) and each time, count how many daisies are in the quadrat. Record this.

4. When you have finished, you can estimate the population size of daisies using the formula

Estimated population size = (total area of the field / area you measured) x total number of daisies you counted.

Part 2:

1. Set Up a transect line. I recommend starting at the trunk of a large tree then running into the centre of the field.

2. Along the line, look at variation of grass density, numbers of daisies and amount of visible soil.

This gives you an opportunity to see variations that care caused by water availability, light availability (shade caused by the tree) and other factors that you may find where you do your investigation. You can create conclusions based around the relationship between (for example) distance from the tree and the amount of bare soil visible.