Environmental Science: A Global ConcernEnvironmental Science: A Global Concern 11th Edition by William Cunningham, Mary Ann Cunningham

Exercise 19

Gather data. Get a meter tape and lay it along the ground from the edge of your habitat patch toward the interior. (You can also use a string and pace distances; treat one pace as a meter.) This line is your transect. At the edge end of the tape (or string), count the number of different species you can see within 1 m 2 on either side of your line. Repeat this count at each 5 m interval, up to 25 m. Thus you will create a list of species at 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 m in from the edge.