Measurements in the Meadow at Cliff Stephen's Park

Cliff Stephen's Park was a great place to learn about canopy density, salinity, and turbidity to just name a few things. My group started down at the dock testing the water for salinity (how high in salt is the water), temperature, and turbidity (measurement of particles in the water attributing to cloudiness). This was a dirty job getting close to the bank of the river, the soil consisted of a dense, dark brown mud.

As we continued through the other stations we laid out our transects to document what we found on the ground within the quadrants and underneath the pin flags. By this time in the afternoon it was getting fairly hot, so we gathered our data so we could move to the next station under the canopy of trees to determine the density of the canopy and use the cruz-all to determine forest area.

Our final stop out in the field took us out to another open area with some scattered trees. Here we determined the height of what appeared to be the tallest tree with the clinometer. We also determined the DBH of one of the nearby trees.

It was a fun day outside and I also got a better understanding of how scientists obtain their samples for testing, especially when they can only take back a portion of the test item.