Practical field ecology: a project guide

This book introduces experimental design and data analysis / interpretation as well as field monitoring skills for both plants and animals. Clearly structured throughout and written in a student-friendly manner, the main emphasis of the book concentrates on the techniques required to design a field based ecological survey and shows how to execute an appropriate sampling regime. The book evaluates appropriate methods, including the problems associated with various techniques and their inherent flaws (e.g. low sample sizes, large amount of field or laboratory work, high cost etc). This provides.

Machine generated contents note: 1. Preparation -- Choosing a topic for study -- Ecological research questions -- Monitoring individual species and groups of species -- Monitoring species richness -- Monitoring population sizes and density -- Monitoring community structure -- Monitoring behaviour -- A note of caution -- Creating aims, objectives and hypotheses -- Reviewing the literature -- Primary literature -- Secondary literature -- Other sources of information -- Search terms -- Reading papers -- Practical considerations -- Legal aspects -- Health and safety issues -- Implementation -- Time management -- Project design and data management -- Designing and setting up experiments and surveys -- Types of data -- Sampling designs -- Planning statistical analysis -- Choosing sampling methods -- Summary -- 2. Monitoring site characteristics -- Site selection -- Site characterisation -- Habitat mapping -- Examination of landscape scale -- Measuring microclimatic variables.

Note continued: Monitoring substrates -- Monitoring water -- Other physical attributes -- Measuring biological attributes -- Identification -- 3. Sampling static organisms -- Sampling techniques for static organis…