Cliff Stephens Park

Cliff Stephens Park

On Thursday, September 3^rd 2015, our class went on our second field trip outside of the Clearwater campus. This field trip took us to Cliff Stephens Park. The weather was about 90 degrees, with a strong breeze and a blue sky where clouds started forming throughout the field trip.

Cliff Stephens Park is very popular among people who play Frisbee golf, as that is what the park is set up for. It is very much a smaller park than Moccasin Lake Nature Park as we visited in our previous field trip. There wasn’t many animals, birds and squirrels were the two that I personally saw the most of.

The focus of this field trip was to put to use skills and knowledge our class had learned in the previous class, and be able to have a better understanding on how to use different tools such as transects, and clinometer and be able to know what to do with these tools in the future.

We were separated into groups and our group started with section number two. This section was to measure an open area and every 10 meters, we were instructed to place a pin flag into the grass to determine what was touching the flag.

0 meters- Grass

10 meters- Grass/Clovers

20 meters- Grass/weeds

30 meters- Grass/weeds

Next, we had to use a different transects which creates a bigger area and divide that area in to percentages of what occupies inside the bigger transects.

0 meters- 4% Spanish moss/ 10% leaves/ 86% grass

10 meters- 70% Grass/ 30% clovers

20 meters- 5% Grass/ 15% covers/ 80% weeds

30 meters- 10% Grass/ 10% Clovers/ 80% weeds

With the soil test we determined it to be sandy loam because we could not form a ribbon.

Section three was our next stop and that was the Cruz section.

Where we had to determine the amount of trees see in the tool.

At number 5- 15

At number 10- 9

At number 20- 3

At number 40- 6

Then we did the dense all- 3 meter intervals

Tree 1   +                                                             Tree 6   -

Tree 2   +                                                             Tree 7   +

Tree 3   +                                                             Tree 8   +

Tree 4   -                                                              Tree 9   +

Tree 5   +                                                             Tree 10 +

Next we moved to section 4 which we were able to use a tool to determine the coverage of trees.

Tree 1   +                                                             Tree 6   -

Tree 2   +                                                             Tree 7   -

Tree 3   -                                                              Tree 8   +

Tree 4   -                                                              Tree 9   +

Tree 5   +                                                             Tree 10 +

So we determined that to be 60% coverage

Next was the Diameter of trees

Tree 1   43 DBH                                                  Tree 6   20 DBH

Tree 2   36 ½ DBH                                             Tree 7   42 DBH

Tree 3   50 DBH                                                  Tree 8   35 DBH

Tree 4   48 DBH                                                  Tree 9   45 DBH

Tree 5   43 DBH                                                  Tree 10 37 DBH

The last section was the water testing area. Here we had to use samples of water to determine the salinity of what water, PH balance and use the lab quest.

Original water salinity was a 0

Lake water salinity we got as a 4

Lake PH balance was a 7

Lab quest was 504 Illumination

Temp = 89.6

Turbidity = 1.3

This park was very enjoyable, and allowed me personally to understand a lot more of what we had talking about in class because I could see it firsthand and be able to create a reference in my head for the future.