DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.1593109
title: The Effect of Human Activity Both Disturbances and Mowing on Golden Rod Abundance in Danby Grasslands YorkU

description: This lab was conducted by sampling a specific plant species called Golden Rod in order to explore the effect of disturbance and previously mowed areas to plant abundance. Mowed area closer to disturbances would have less abundance compared to unmowed area further away from the disturbance. This took place in York University at a grassland area near the Danby Wood Lot. The data was collected for two days, October 14th and 21th, 2015 from 3:00pm – 5:00pm. On Wednesday October 14th, the weather was slightly sunny 13 °C slightly breezy. The sampling area had slightly dry grass but the plants were alive. On Wednesday October 21st, the weather was clear, sunny (14 °C) and there was no breeze. The sampling area was very dry in the moved but not in the unmowed area; a lot of plants were dying off in that area specifically common milkweed and Common Plantain. The golden rod plants were found in a clumped distribution and were still alive during both days. There were no animals or bugs that were spotted in the sampling area. There were two disturbances in the sampling area on either sides of the grassland; Severn Road and Keele Street. Distance 1 refers to the egde of the grassland from Keele Street till a replicate and distance 2 refers to the edge of the grassland from Severn Road till a replicate. The collaborators for this lab were A. Amin, L. Trans, J. Quach and S. Alvi. The collaborators were split into two groups; one collecting samples in the mowed area (L. Trans, J. Quach and S. Alvi.) and the other collected data for the mowed sampling area (A. Amin and I. Darman). The sampling method used in this study was belt transect sampling using two 30m belt transects, 1m by 1m quadrats and the Plant quick-identification guide (provided on the course website). The sampling area stretched 100m vertically from the edge of the side walk on Severn Road to the grassland. Five 100m transects, were measured each 10 meters horizontally apart along the sidewalk (1 Transects in the mowed area, 1 for unmowed and 3 for a mixture of both). Each belt transect had a 1m by 1m quadrat placed every 5m anywhere about maximum 3m from each side of the belt transect tape starting from 0m and ending at 100m (21 replicates per transect). The 30m transect was used to measure out 100m by first collecting data for the first 6 replicates (30m), then measuring another 30m from the last point which adds another 6 replicates (60m) and the same is done for the next 6 (90m), 2 replicates (100m) and one more replicate at the end of the transect. This sums the sampling size to be 105 replicates and the abundance of golden rods was recorded in each of them. Measurements were done by I. Darman for the mowed area and L. Trans, J. Quach and S. Alvi. for the unmowed area. The abundance of the plant were visually counted and recorded in a notebook by A. Amin in the mowed area and by L. Trans, J. Quach and S. Alvi. in the unmowed area. The plant identification guide was used to identify the Golden Rods. About half of the data was collected during the first days (50 replicates) and the other half was left for the last day (50 replicates).