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Comparing Primary and Secondary Forest in a Preserve in Plano Texas: A Forest Ecology Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) for Non-Majors and Lower-Level Majors

Author(s): Tamara Basham

Collin County Commuity College District

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Summary:
An activity that can be conducted as an online or field exercise in which students develop and test their hypotheses about how forest stand characteristics differ between two forest types.

Licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 21 Jul 2020 doi:10.25334/ND72-R068 - cite this

Description

Over the course of two to three lab periods, students use their knowledge of ecological succession and forest ecology to develop and test their hypotheses about how forest stand characteristics differ between two forest types: 1) primary forest and 2) secondary forest that has been re-growing since 1995. This activity can be conducted as a field exercise followed by two lab periods in which students process and analyze collected data using pivot tables in Excel, and then present their findings in a poster format. Alternatively, the exercise can be conducted online using previously collected data. Materials for the online version of the exercises are provided here.

Notes

First online version adapted from a field exercise.

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