I did plant transects today in Abuko National Park in order to survey the plant diversity among the different habitats within the park. Katie and I tagged distances of 100 meters along the park fence. Then we went 50 yards away from the tree line into the jungle along these tags and measured every 10 meters (till we got to 100) while tagging the closest tree to the 10 meter spot. Katie will then use a random number chart to select three points along each of these 100 meter transects. On the weekend students from the Gambia will go to these points on each transect and use the quarter/quadrant method. At each point they will walk in the four directions and stop at the first tree they reach. they will measure how far away from the original point the tree was (for plant density), identify the tree, and measure DBH- diameter at breast height. 24 transects x 3 points each = a lot of trees.
Doing only 4 transects took about 5 hours (plus the walk there and back). So I was wading through water, mud, spiders the size of my face, termites, and waist deep vegetation for a long time. It was tiring but I was handed a Gambian donut when I got to Happy Camp so it kind of makes up for how tired I was. Oh and I saw monkeys.
Spiders the size of your face -- yikes! But monkeys make up for it, don't they?
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