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| A multi agency project funded by US EPA's STAR Program | ||||||||
Sampling Wetland Vegetation
Tripod holding GPS unit: GPS is used to find the sampling transects within the vegetated zone of each wetland. Sampling transects for each site are designated beforehand, back in our GIS laboratory, and their coordinates are loaded into the GPS unit. These coordinates then guide the field crew to each transect within each wetland.
Meter tape: A long measuring tape is used to determine where along each transect to place the 1 meter quadrats and collect vegetation data.
Quadrat: Every 50 meters or so along each transect, wetland vegetation is inventoried within a 1 meter square quadrat frame. Within each quadrat, all plant species are identified and the amount of area (called percent cover) that they occupy within the frame is estimated.
Collecting Plant Data in a Quadrat
The
vegetation crew found 5 types of plants plus driftwood in this particular
quadrat (some of the plants don't show up well in the picture and the
driftwood is on the wetland bottom).
| Common Name | Scientific Name | Percent cover class |
| Pond lily | Nuphar | 51-75% |
| Bladderwort | Utricularia vulgaris | 26-50% |
| Pondweed species | Potamogeton | 2-6% |
| Floating bur-reed | Sparganium fluctuans | 0-1% |
| Lycopus | Lycopus | 0-1% |
| Driftwood | 7-25% |
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