Species richness at Burr Oak Preserve was greater than the species richness at North Farm. Species Evenness between the two sites were opposite. North Farm had a greater species evenness than Burr Oak Preserve. When measuring alpha diversity of each site, we used Shannon’s Index to give a broad view of each site. This showed us that the Shannon’s value for Burr Oak Preserve was a larger value at 2.18 than North Farm 1.82. When Comparing the two sites for Beta diversity, we noticed that the species overlap for the two areas was very high. We calculated this using Sorenson’s Index which showed that there was a 46% species overlap between the two sites. We also measured the mean to point ratio. Burr Oak mean distance to tree ratio was 3.5 meters compared to North Farms 3.1 …show more content…
Although Burr Oak Preserve had a greater species richness than North Farm, we can still see some trees in common. The majority of these trees consisted of Red and White Oaks, Hickories, Sweet Gums, Elms, Ash, and Basswood. IN Burr Oak Preserve, there was a larger mean distance to tree ratio. This is suggesting that there is more light resource available for smaller growing hardwood trees. This is due to the early successional trees reaching their climax age and dying out. We can also see that Burr Oak Preserve is halfway taken over by hardwood or later successional species by 53%. This is also supported by the comparison of basal area of each species. We can see that at Burr Oak Preserve that there was a larger basal area for oaks and hickories when compared to later successional trees. At North farm, There was a smaller mean distance to tree ratio but it only varies by .4 meters. North Farm also had a significantly large number of hardwood trees growing as well. Controversially, we can see that the ball area of late successional trees is less than that of the early successional