Distribution of Cones and Acorns

Purpose:

The purpose of this exercise is twofold. The first part relates to the question "Do oak and conifer trees distribute their reproductive products, acorns and cones, in a regular or irregular fashion about their bases. Underlying this question is the thought that if an oak or conifer seedling sprouts too close to its parent, it will be in competition with its parent for nutrients and moisture. It will also be shaded by its parent. Therefore it would seem more logical for acorns and cones to fall away from the parent tree rather than close to its trunk. The other purpose of this exercise is to apply a couple of statistical techniques to the derived data. You will be using Chi Square to check the distributions of the data. The other statistical component will be to test the collected data for normality.

Directions:

1. Select an oak or conifer tree that has a location pretty much separate from surrounding trees. Also find a tree that is pretty much on level ground rather than on sloping ground. Record all pertinent information (eg., dbh, location, health, stand composition, etc.)
2. Run four one meter wide strips out from the trunk. These should be oriented so that one runs in each compass direction. Collect acorns or cones from each square meter until you have collected from all quadrats in one direction and then do the same for the other directions. Keep all materials in separate bags. You should end up with 20 bags.
3. When you return to lab, weigh each bag to determine the biomass of the material. Also record counts of items per quadrat.

Some questions:

1. Are the products located equally on all sides of the tree?
2. Are the products equally distributed from the trunk outward in terms of biomass, numbers?
3. Pool all the directional data, i.e., combine all the nearest meter quadrats into one, all the second meter quadrats into one, etc. Does the resultant data have a normal distribution.

Materials:

1. Compass
2. Tapemeasure
3. 20 ziplock bags