Cliff Stephens

Temperature: 90 Degrees

Weather Condition- Partly Cloudy 40% coverage, slight breeze

The location of Cliff Stephens Park is down the road from last week’s location at Moccasin Lake. The purpose of this field trip was to gain hands on experience using various field sampling tools.  The tools used were site specific to 4 locations within the park.

Site one was the dock, at this site the goal was to test salinity, water temperature, turbidity and pH. Vernier’s Probes were used for the testing of the temperature and turbidity; for pH, strips of pH paper were used and salinity was observed using a refractometer. 

 

 

Site two was an open area in direct sunlight. This site had us observe Quadrat sampling of 3 different locations along 30 meter line. The main observation was the coverage of plant to dirt ratio. Also, this site had us complete a flag drop and observing everything the flag touched as it fell into the ground. Finally at this site we had to determine soil type.

Site three was located under a tree canopy. This site had us use a cruzall to determine tree size, a densitometer for canopy coverage and we tested the soil type.

Site four was located under slight tree canopy, there was more sunlight present than in site three. At this site we use a Clinometer to determine height of a tree. We also used the densitometer to determine the canopy coverage and completed BDH measurements.

I thoroughly enjoyed being able to gain hands on experience using these tools.