The Shannons Diversity Index For South Plots Of Aspen...

Results: The variables that we examined were the mean proportion of the qualitative categories in 2012 vs. 2015, the Shannon’s diversity index for 2012 vs. 2015 for south plots and that of Aspen plots control vs. treatment. These variables were each represented in one of my graphs. The graph in Figure 1 was a histogram which depicted the mean proportion among all 2015 plots for each designated category. The graph compared the qualitative category of ground cover type with the quantitative discrete variable calculated by averaging the proportional frequency of each category among all the south plots. Figure 1 Figure 2The graph in Figure 2 was a histogram which depicted the same variables, but only for the south treatment plots from 2012.†¦show more content†¦The graph in Figure 3 was a bar graph which depicted the mean diversity index for 2012 and 2015 south treatment plots. The graph compared the qualitative variable of year with the quantitative continuous variable calculated by the Shannon’s Diversity index. Figure 3 These results were not very significant as the number of indices recorded was 3 and 3 for group 2012 and 2015 respectively. Consequently, the graph ended up having enormous error bars, which only further indicated that we cannot conclude much from this graph even though the treatment group seemed to have a higher diversity index. In real ecosystems the Shannon’s diversity index often averages between 1.5 and 3.5. Our index was lower even though the ground cover seems fairly diverse as it is not uniformly diverse. This decrease the diversity index as the index fluctuated based diversity and the uniformness of the diversity. Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 4 showed a histogram of the Shannon’s Diversity Indies of the south treatments in both years. The distribution was almost uniform, other than a mode of 2 between .60 and .8. The distribution of the histogram highlighted the lack of data as all, but one of the frequencies was 1. This was also exemplified in Figure 3 by large error bars. The graph in Figure 5 was a bar graph which depicted the mean diversity index for both Aspen treatment and control plots. The graph compared the