Biodiversity surveys...

[WildCassieThing]

Does anyone know of any that aren't quadrats? If you do could you PLEASE let me know! I want to carry out an independant survey to see if there is less wildlife on a nature resevre as one of my friend claims
WCT :-)

[Brocakat]

Wouldn't your survey have to be composed of:- simply many, many more quadrats at the same site?

[stigofthedump]

I would have thought that first and foremost the survey should have aims and objectives......We survey for Bryophytes, some may survey for small mammals some may do a NVC, inverts etc etc. To survey for wildlife?
A bit too complicated for me.



Vince

[STYRBJORN]

I'm terribly sorry to reveal my iggerance but what is a quadrat? Is it a rodent that rides a 4-wheel motorbike?

Please enlighten the darkness with which I am enveloped.

Ric

[stigofthedump]

Originally Posted by STYRBJORN

Is it a rodent that rides a 4-wheel motorbike?

Ric

Yep got it in one, almost impossible to find and a devil to 'Key out' when one does have the good fortune to come across one


Vince

[CharlieCreek]

As someone else said you need to set your objectives.

A wildlife survey doesn't have to include quadrats for example:

A survey for birds could be identifying and counting and recording totals for species seen on the reserve as a whole.

A survey for bats could be stops along transects and recording the species and numbers with a gps reference.

A basic survey for say flora could be simply identifying the plants and recording them which goves you an idea of the species present.

A more indepth survey for flora would be taking random quadrats and looking at plant percentage cover.

A full survey would be following a number of transects with a number of quadrats on each transect and recording plants and percentage cover and then entering the data to find the NVC classification.

So it's as indepth as you want to make it, the more indepth the more data and the more meaning, but if it is a simple 'what is here' then just recording what is present as seen when walked would be OK. If it is for a report then more scientific methods would need to be employed.

Also if you are comparing then you need to use the same methology as the surveys carried out on the other areas, and also what are the other areas? It is quite a fuzzy comparison 'less wildlife on a nature reserve' - less wildlife than compared to where? The reserve - different reserves will be very different - other non reserve areas will be very different to each other etc.

[Fuzzy-felt bloke]

an independant survey to see if there is less wildlife on a nature resevre

So you have a base line in which to compare your results with!!!

There is a quick and easy survey running at the moment for Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) network, OPAL | The Open Air Laboratories Network

You could use this survey and send your results in adding to the national database.

Fuzzy-Felt Bloke

[Matt Smith]

Originally Posted by WildCassieThing

Does anyone know of any that aren't quadrats? If you do could you PLEASE let me know! I want to carry out an independant survey to see if there is less wildlife on a nature resevre as one of my friend claims
WCT :-)

If you want to compare results with your friend, then you have to use the same methodology as your friend did, or getting "real" comparisoms can be difficult.

[WildCassieThing]

Wow! A flood of answers!
Thank you! I will try and do the surveys in deeper depth, to see how much there is. My friend recons there is less wildlife since cows were introduced to graze the reserve, but I've seen adders there this year and more butterfloes! Will need to make a quadrat (this is a suare divided up into 25 smaller sections).

[Meta menardi]

Originally Posted by WildCassieThing

Wow! A flood of answers!
Thank you! I will try and do the surveys in deeper depth, to see how much there is. My friend recons there is less wildlife since cows were introduced to graze the reserve, but I've seen adders there this year and more butterfloes! Will need to make a quadrat (this is a suare divided up into 25 smaller sections).

This is very tantalising. Do you want to make a comparison between something that was there before a change was made (introduction of grazing cows)?

If you have no data from before the change was made, you can make a baseline of data at the present (record what is there now) and work over years to see if there is a change. This would show what effect grazing would have over a period of time.

Since the grazing has started, you can't compare this with what happened before grazing was started.

I think you may get some help with your projected study, more information about what you want to do would be very useful.