Fieldwork techniques in 4.5 minutes

Video transcript

Hi I'm Pat from Field of Mars EEC. I'm here in a eucalyptus forest in south-eastern Australia doing some field work to collect some data about this environment, come and give me a hand.

The light intensity in the forest is influenced by the season, the time of day, the weather, the landform and the surrounding vegetation. We can measure the light intensity with a light meter like this. 

Look up. The proportion of the sky that's been blocked out by leaves and branches is known as the canopy cover. Using this chart I estimate that the canopy cover here is about fifty-five percent. 

This instrument is called a Kestrel, now it measures a lot of things. Right now I'm measuring the air temperature which is nineteen point four degrees Celsius. 

The Kestrel can also record the relative humidity, which is a way of recording how much moisture there is in the air. At the moment it is eighty-nine percent humidity. 

I'm down in a valley and I'm sheltered by the shape of the land, the rocks and the plants. I'm measuring the wind speed with the Kestrel but currently it's reading zero kilometers an hour. 

The slope of this hill site influences the rate of the erosion and the exposure to the sun and wind. We can measure the slope of the hill with a clinometer, like this. The slope of this hillside right here is sixteen degrees. 

This is the leaf litter. It's just the sticks and leaves that are slowly decomposing to become part of the soil below. The leaf litter is very important as part of the habitat for the plants and animals that live in this sort of forest. We can estimate the leaf litter coverage using a counting frame known as a quadrat and when placed on the ground I can estimate that we've got ninety percent leaf litter coverage.

 We can identify what sort of plants are growing here by using a plant identification key. In a forest like this people often organise the plants into different layers: ground covers, shrubs and of course trees. Using my key I've identified a ground cover called Bracken fern and a tree called Sydney peppermint. 

Below the leaf litter is the soil. Soils are a mixture of rock particles, air, moisture and organic material. We can measure the soil moisture using a moisture probe which right now is telling me on a scale of one to eight, a very dry reading of one. 

Soils are not all the same texture. Right here the soil has a sandy texture which is different to the clay soils which are often found at the top of the hills in this part of Australia. Plants and animals need different soil texture types to survive. Soils are chemically active. 

We can measure how acidic or alkaline a soil is by using a chemical test such as this. The barium powder has turned yellow which according to this colour chart tells me that we've got a slightly acid soil with a pH of about four and a half. 

Soil temperature is an important factor for plant germination and growth. We can measure it using a soil temperature probe pushed into the ground like this. 

This patch of forest is on the side of a hill and the direction the slope of that hill faces is called its aspect. We can record the aspect using a compass like this. So let's see, north's behind me, south's that way in this case the hill has a south easterly aspect. 

I've been collecting all this information in a data table on my iPad. Now I can use the information as data to compare with other places or maybe I can plan to come back here and measure again to get an idea how things have changed after say a drought or a bushfire. 

That was great guys you know I reckon you're ready to plan and carry out a fieldwork investigation in a forest or any environment close to you. Why not give it a go?

End of transcript.