Cliff Stephens Park

Date: 9/3/2015
Location: Cliff Stephens Park, Clearwater
Temperature: 90°F

On our 3rd field trip we went to Cliff Stephens Park which is located in Clerwater, about 10 minutes
from the SPC campus. This 44 acre park features lots of trails, nice views and is a popular place to visit among disc golf enthusiasts. We started our exploration around 2:00PM and had to take samples and measurements from 4 different sites.

Site #1 -  Lake

The first site had to do with a small lake the park has. We captured some sample water, here are the data we gathered:

Salinity: 40%
Turbidity: 46 NTU
ph: 6
Illumination: 642 LUX

Site #2 - Open area

At this site we had two sampling areas with each having two points that were 30 meters apart. We used pin flags on the first area that were dropped every 10 meters.

Pin flag #1 - 50% grass, 50% weeds, dirt soil
Pin flag #2 - 100% grass, dirt soil
Pin flag #3 - 100% grass, dirt soil

The second sampling area was done with quadrats.

Quadrat #1 - 70% weed, 20% dirt soil, 10% grass
Quadrat #2 - 50% grass, 45% clover, 5% weed
Quadrat #3 - 50% grass type 1, 50% grass type 2

We also tested the soil at this area and it came out to be silt loam.

Site #3 - Under the canopy

This was our first measuring area, we had to use Cruz-all, densiometer and test the soil texture.

Cruz-all: 8
Densiometer: 9/10 (90%)
Soil texture: loamy sand

Site #4 - Under the canopy

At the second "Under the canopy" measuring area we had to measure thickness of the closest trees (DBH), estimate the highest trees' height (klinometer) and use the densiometer:

1-15 meter: 125cm DBH
15-20 meter: 153cm DBH
20-23 meter: 142cm DBH
23-30 meter: 140cm DBH

Klinometer: 46ft

Densiometer: 60%