Browsing by Author "Vang, Na"

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    A COMPARISON OF SMALL MAMMAL DIVERSITY IN FORESTED HABITATS TO PRAIRIE HABITATS
    (2011-02-09) Vang, Na
    This report, in its attempt to understand diversity, will focus on small mammals found within and close to Itasca State Park, Minnesota. The two types of habitat that were used to collect our data and to conduct our comparison included forested habitats and prairie habitats. Within the forested habitats, we had a variety of smaller biomes: burned deciduous forest, unburned deciduous forest, burned red pine forest, unburned red pine forest, aspen forest, and bog. As for the prairie habitats, it was harder to get an array of smaller biomes; therefore, we divided this habitat type by region, giving us Rush South, Rush North, Coburn East, Coburn West, Waubun Wet, and Waubun Dry. The questions we hoped to answer in this experiment were as followed: 1) Which communities, inside forest sites or the prairie sites, have more species? 2) Are there any common species to both locations? and 3) To what attributes can we see similarities or differences?
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    Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Study the Effects of Plains Pocket Gopher (Geomys bursarius) Mound Building on Vegetation
    (2011-02-09) Nosal, Amanda; Featherstone, Bryan; Vang, Na
    We explored qualitative and quantitative approaches to evaluate the impact of the plains pocket gopher (Geomys bursarius) mounds on the plant community. We hypothesized that plant species richness would be higher on mounds than surrounding areas and that the mounds would create significant impacts on plant diversity. We categorized mounds as ―new,‖ ―abandoned,‖ or ―old,‖ measured the width of the abandoned mounds, and noted the different plant species present on the mounds and the control plots. Our results indicated that species richness is significantly increased on and near gopher mounds, and overall, gopher mounds significantly alter local plant community. This study demonstrates that the impacts of Geomys bursarius activities are just as critical as its role in the trophic web.