Ideally, you’ll be able to find some way to make a meter squared box,
but if you can’t your quadrat can be smaller. As long as the size of
your quadrat is consistent each time you use it, the experiment will
work. Be sure to take a picture of
your home-made quadrat. We’ll be using it for the discussion this
week.
We’ll be using the transect method like the second technique shown in
the video. This allows us to first determine the transect line that we
would like to follow and use the quadrat to sample an equal amount of
space at each predetermined point. That means that once you get to your
habitat, you’ll choose where on the edge to start and you’ll aim toward
the center of the area as you go.
Once you find a good spot, set down your quadrat to take your first data
collection. To conduct the sampling within your quadrat, simply count
the number of individuals of each species. You’ll need to keep track of
what species are present and how many of each there are,
so you’ll need to make a data table . Before you start, you’ll
need to decide how to deal with plants that are partly in and partly out
of the quadrat. One possibility is to include plants that are more than
half in and exclude ones less than half in. Another is to include all
the border plants on the north and east sides and exclude all of those
on the south and west sides.