Second Day of Data Collection: Seasoned Veterans

View from atop the sand dune looking towards our site.

Early on the third of November, we reembarked to our study site in MDO. Our goal of this outing was to finish collecting sample data using our new point count technique and not lose any members along the way. I arrived at the park well before the rest of the team which allowed my to get another perspective on our study site. Across Pecho Valley Road from our study site are some tremendous sand dunes. Before beginning, I climbed to the top to enjoy a little breakfast by the ocean and get more of a bird's eye view of our study site. There is truly a remarkable number of eucalyptus trees in the park!

Once there we divided into two teams each tasked with collecting several point counts. Jeffrey and I decided to use our old transects to randomly sample from. What we did was generate a number between 1 and 43 that would correspond to a specific transect. Then we selected a number from 1 to 140 that would tell us how many meters to travel down the transect before getting to our sampling area. Once at the randomized location, we used a transect tape to create a large circle with a radius of 15 meters.

Transect tape disappearing into the distance.

This sampling technique did turn out to be less arduous than the transect sampling we tried earlier. There was still a good deal of hiking involved, however, we were not trying to count trees while hiking. This allowed a more focused effort on the sampling task and perhaps gave us more accurate results. Interestingly enough, during a part of the sampling I noticed we were walking on a game trail that was littered in feces. I later learned that they were coyote feces which I though was very exciting to see. This is completely off topic though. So, let's get back to it!

With the combined effort of our two groups were were able to complete 13 point counts which was higher than our goal. It seems that we have developed our forest legs. The results of our second day of data collection are very exciting. There is a remarkable correlation between the estimations generated by our two techniques which makes me confident that we have created a precise range for the eucalyptus population size. I'm not going to give away the punch line here though. For that, stay tuned for our Results and Discussion post, coming soon!

    -Nathan