Ecology Field Methods: Quadrats, Mark-Recapture & Population Estimates

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Turn plant counts from ten random quadrats into mean count, density per m², frequency and relative density for four species.
• Convert cover-class codes recorded in the field into percent cover with a lookup, average them and turn the mean back into a class code.
• Scale the mean quadrat count up to the whole meadow and put a 95 % confidence interval around the estimate with STDEV.S and T.INV.2T.
• Estimate five newt populations from one mark and one recapture session, with the Lincoln-Petersen index, Chapman's correction and a 95 % interval.
• Track the marked animals at large over six trapping nights and estimate the population with the Schnabel method and its corrected form.
• Turn sighting distances and angles into perpendicular distances, then estimate skylark density from a fixed strip and from an effective strip width.
• Find in which sample each species was first recorded, count new and cumulative species per sample and chart the species accumulation curve.
• Count the species shared by three meadows, compare each pair with the Jaccard and Sørensen indices and measure the turnover with Whittaker's β.