Forestry Management Outline
Introduction:
Background information
Should specifically be relevant to the variables you made graphs for today in class
In-text citations for your background information
Hypotheses:
Specifically: Need hypotheses addressing variables we made graphs for today in class (i.e. tree density, canopy cover, species richness, and average DBH) and compare these across the two types of forest. You should have hypotheses for each variable. Hypotheses do not have to align with the results. You could make them based on what you might have initially thought would happen and then discuss why you think your results are different in your discussion.
Methods:
In paragraph format you should write that your study site was Lincoln National Forest and you randomly chose starting points for a 100m transect in both managed and unmanaged forest stands. Then you generated 5 random numbers as random points along that transect to conduct point quarter method tree sampling (Mitchell, 2007). Reword this into your own methods section (I recommend scanning the methods in the Mitchell paper that explains the point quarter method in more detail. You need to cite the Mitchell paper here in the methods because you used the methods outlined in that paper to get your data.
List the measurements that were collected (column names in the excel datasheet you worked with today) and how you recorded those measurements. You should know how they got distance to nearest tree, canopy cover, etc because this was what you did when we went out to the horseshoe – just pretend we were in Lincoln National Forest doing the same things instead.
Results:
Paragraph describing the main take-aways from the graphs you created, including values/numbers, and reference those graphs at the end of the sentence (Figure 1)
Table labels = on top
Figure labels = below
Read lab instructions and make sure you have all graphs and tables required for the lab
Make sure unit of measurement is included on y-axis
Give descriptive chart titles
Make sure your chart makes sense. If it doesn’t try changing chart style.
Discussion:
Interpret the main findings that you wrote about in your results paragraph.
Say specifically whether your hypotheses were supported or not and offer some reasons why this was the case. Can use additional in-text citations here if you need to.
Have a big picture sentence that explains why your findings are important for this particular field (in this case: forest management).
References Cited/Literature Cited:
At least 3 peer-reviewed citations in correct APA format and in alphabetical order. If you don’t cite it in the text, it should not be included. Likewise, if you *do* cite it in the text, it needs to be included in your literature cited.