Question

Observation: Hiking trails with more human foot traffic have less woody vegetation (e.g, trees) than hiking trails with less human traffic.

experiment:

• Three trails were assessed during this experiment: one where the foot traffic was measured to be 75-100 pedestrians passing by each hour, the second with only 25-50 pedestrians each hour, and one where there was only 1-10 pedestrians per hour.
• 10 x 10 foot quadrants were laid out at ten locations throughout the trail and the number of woody plants was counted and averaged.

Write a complete methods section describing your experiment design. This methods section should follow all the rules discussed in ecology lab.

Answer 1

The human recreational activities increased at very high frequencies especially ecotourism. The activities like walking, jogging ,biking, hiking etc. are done in natural environment to escape from city lives. These activities disturbs wildlife and there are effects like changes in vegetation and in turn disturbs in habitat of wildlife.So in this experiment the aim is to study the effect of human hiking trails in the vegetation.Trails with more human foot traffic have less woody vegetation like trees than hiking trails with less human traffic.
Experiment
Three trails were assessed during this experiment.In the first trail the foot traffic was measured to be 75-100 pedestrians passing by each hour, the second with only 25-50 pedestrians each hour, and third where there was only 1-10 pedestrians per hour.10 x 10 foot quadrants were laid out at ten locations throughout the trail and the number of woody plants was counted and averaged.Also it is recommended to find a site that is untouched by humans or a plot that is not a recreational site so that the changes and impact of humans in vegetation of the sites can be clearly studied.
Methods
At all the 10*10 foot quadrants at ten locations the vegetation surveys should be done.The vegetation of trees, shrubs and canopy cover.Count the number of trees and take average.Take pictures of each location.Detailed descriptions of the trail condition should be also included like width and depth of trails,exposed soil,muddy soil,rocks,roots etc.There are diffrent methods for assessing the trails.All the vegetation variables showing the characteristics of vegetation should be documented.A trail measuring wheel can be used for this.Also another varient study for this experiment is to do a survey before and after hiking so that the conditions can be assessed.The trails width increases as the hiking continue over a large period of time .So the hiking paths may lead to a wider trail.This can be assessed by doing surveys in diffrent time periods.Data analysis can be done by any statistical method and evaluate the influence of various factors in vegetation.Train condition for each individual trail in diffrent locations should be evaluated and all the conditions of trail and impact on the vegetation for each conditions should also be evaluated.