View from the Santa Catalina Mountains down on the Tucson Valley
In the fall of 2016, I took two field trips with my botany class and prepared reports for both excursions. The first one was in September in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson at Middle Bear Campground, Aspen Viewpoint, and Bear Wallow Campground. The primary goal was to learn basic data gathering techniques in field botany, including describing plants, using one’s stride length to measure out 20 meter distances on flat, uphill, and downhill slopes, estimating the height and diameter of tall trees, identifying common species, describing the exact, specific locations of particular plants, and estimating plant destiny within a given region.
The second field trip was in October at the Cienega Creek Natural Preserve southeast of Tucson; research was conducted within a 100 meter long by ~55 meter wide section of a riverbed. Here the main objectives were to compile a species checklist, determine the most common herbaceous/woody plants, estimate which species accounted for the most vegetative cover, and explain the relationship between number of species and area sampled, as well as practice some more plant descriptions.
Note: I worked with three other students on the first field trip, and with eight others on the second one. However, names have been removed from the reports for privacy’s sake.