search

nutnetadmin / nutnet-data-tracker

Track bugs, changes and updates in NutNet data
2 stars 0 forks source link

Upload new sampling data: drake.za 2019-2021 (Y0-2) #369

Closed nutnetadmin closed 2 years ago

nutnetadmin commented 3 years ago

Just some responses to earlier conversations:

I have used the correct date format
I have used the period and not rounded off data (e.g. 27.79)
Biomass is unscaled (g/0.2 m2) i.e. per the area of the 2 clip strips (do you just x 5 and convert to g/m2)?
We haven't collected litter biomass up to now (wasn't aware that we needed to) but hopefully we can going forward. 
I have kept the '0' cover species in (I had already captured it as such).
I still believe data are a good representative of absolute cover (despite not being aware of the NutNet absolute cover requisite). I took lots of time and care in recording cover data as I saw represented in the plots. The only difference you will notice between what I have just sent in the official NutNet spreadsheet and what I sent some weeks back in the incorrect format is as follows: there were a small number of species where their cover had been written as a fraction e.g. 0.5%, 1.5%, 2.5%. I have rounded these up to whole numbers: 1%, 2%, 3% respectively. The total cover per plot is now just over 100% (i.e. 101-103%).

In terms of our 'basic plan', we attend to the site as follows:

The entire site can/gets burnt in winter. Fire is the key driver of these montane grasslands. It so happens that we have had fire in every winter preceding our sampling period since the inception of the project. So at least there is consistency in this. I know fire is not a treatment in NutNet so we don't manipulate fire at all. But our site burns either as part of the greater management block it is in or because of arson fires from the community below. But we make sure that if there has been a fire, that the entire site is burnt evenly. I have indicated the fire events in the cover and biomass data. If the site does not burn for any given season, I will indicate as such as well for coding purposes. 
We visit the site in November after the first decent Spring rains and apply the fertilizer treatments to get the fertilizer effect going.
We return later during the flowering peak (December to February) depending on how early the Spring rains are and do the composition and cover measurements.
We return in early April (early autumn) at the end of the growing season to harvest biomass. 
We also do our own soil surveys. We have done one at the onset of the project baseline (when we collected soils in duplicate which we sent to Anita at Minnesota) and will be doing one next month to see if there are any changes in soil fertility 3 years in. We have also done a soil depth assessment of the site. 
Once we have done the biomass weighing, we send our plant biomass to a plant laboratory for a full plant nutrient analysis.

I have attached the new site information document and the herbivory and cultivation questionnaire (can't remember if I have sent you this before).

nutnetadmin commented 2 years ago

Uploaded with 'import-drake-2019-2021.sql'