Introduction to sampling

In today's lesson we went outside to view the plant life on the school grounds.

On the tour I showed some areas where abiotic factors have affected the habitats and led to a variation in plant life found.

We looked at some of the very old trees on the grounds and saw that the bark provides a habitat for lichens and mosses. This is an excellent example to show Gause's Law in operation. There is limited space and variable abiotic conditions on the trees leading to differences in the types of lichens found.

We then carried out an exercise to find out how many different plant species occurred on the playing field and their percentage cover.

This was a trick exercise. It is almost impossible to succeed with this without a plan. Ecologists need to use sampling techniques that enable the accurate assessment of how much of any given species there are in a given area at a given time. This needs to be reproducible and carried out ethically.

Having tried ourselves to measure species with the incorrect way, we will now spend our lessons learning the different techniques to sample populations (plant and animal) and will eventually get to apply these at Lake Rototiti.

Finally, a reminder to get the Rotoiti acceptance letters back asap.