Investigating the Effects of Shade From Trees on Plants Below
Introduction
A collection of living things together at the same place and time is
called a Habitat. The main purpose of a habitat is to provide and
adequate food supply, a comfortable place to breeding/reproduction to
take place and to provide a certain degree of shelter. Examples of
various habitats are:
ü Forests and woodland/ trees
ü Bushes and shrubs
ü Ponds/ lakes
ü Sand dunes
ü Grassland
ü Rocky shores
ü Mossy brick walls
Apart from where the habitat is situated, there are also 5 other key
factors that affect the living things in a habitat. These are:
1. Climate: which includes variation in Temperature, the amount of
rainfall, the light intensity and wind variation.
2. Biotic: Interaction of living things e.g. food chains/ webs
3. Humans: pollution and insecticides are used which effect the
environment.
4. Soil: Variations in soil type lead to certain living things having
to live in certain areas
5. Shape of the land and aspect: certain areas of land would not be
suitable for all living things because of various obstacles.
A woodland habitat
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Within a woodland habitat the main dominating organisms are the trees.
The reason for their domination apart from the fact that they are
usually larger than most other wildlife is due to the fact that trees
have large canopies of branches and leaves. The canopies are situated
at the top of the trees therefore casting a shade on all that grows
below it.
Woods are described as Strasfied; this is because woodland areas are
in layers and block out most of the light.
Layer
Description
Canopy layer
Ash, Oak, Elm, Cherry, Sycamore
Shrub Layer
Small trees growing under the canopy layer e.g. Hawthorn, Blackthorn,
Holly, Blackberry.
Herb Layer
Smaller, non-woody plants growing under the two layers above e.g.
Grass, Dogs mercury, Ground Ivy, Ivy, Honey Suckle, Goose Grass.
Moore, M. R., & Vankat, J. L. (1986). Responses of the herb layer to the gap dynamics of a mature beech-maple forest. American Midland Naturalist, 336-347.
I am going to identify the plants in each area and count them. I will
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Once the gray wolf population had declined in the National Park, many ecological impacts were observed. Without a sustainable wolf population in the park, the elk population began to take over and increase in size. Due to this increase in elk, many of the deciduous woody species began to become overgrazed. With the e...
...le would be more than that of American beech because sugar maple produce more seeds than American beech. Furthermore, we study whether the two species co-exist via reciprocal replacement, habitat preference or merely by chance. We believe that habitat preference may be the mechanism of coexistence here and therefore we hypothesize that there will be more American beech tree neighbors as they may represent the most biomass as per our third hypothesis. Thereafter, root sprouting is effective in American beech to give them a greater horizontal growth than sugar maple. Hence, we hypothesize that sugar maple canopies will be less asymmetrical than American beech. Finally, because a nearby canopy may restrict a tree canopy growth in the same direction, we hypothesize that a tree will grow its respective canopy away from its neighboring canopy to receive maximum sunlight.
The communities of various native plants have been significantly minimized as a result of ...
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