Riparian Ecosystem

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Overall, the stream ecosystem was the most biodiverse. It rated the highest in the Shannon-Wiener biodiversity equation (Table 4), and it also had the greatest species dissimilarity between sampled areas according to the Bray-Curtis Index. We only considered the ground level in the Riparian ecosystem because the other 2 ecosystems were ground level. The riparian ground level had a similar score to the stream ecosystem on the Shannon-Wiener biodiversity equation. The intertidal ecosystem had a much lower Shannon-Wiener biodiversity index (Table 4). The intertidal species evenness was comparable to that calculated for the riparian ecosystem (Table 1; Table 3), but the overall biodiversity of the intertidal zone was still lower.

Shannon-Wiener …show more content…
There were two animals found, a Planorbidae snail and a worm. While birds were heard, none were recorded. The relative absence of animals may be due to a flaw in experimental design, meaning that not enough area was tested. The animals may have migrated to warmer climates, leaving behind only eggs or larvae in the soil.
The evenness of the canopy and middle layers in the riparian ecosystem is high (Table 3). This means that there is less variability among species and numbers of individuals in those species (Mulder, 2004). The ground level of the riparian ecosystem is low. This means that there is more variability among species (Mulder, 2004).
The average Bray-Curtis dissimilarity index between the levels of the riparian ecosystem, 0.783, shows that the levels are dissimilar. While there are common species across the three layers, these do not make up a large part of the species in each layer. We hypothesize that this may be due to the different morphologies of the plants found at each level. Some of the plants, such as the trees, will span all three levels due to their height variance and their canopy. Moss can span all three levels as well, due to growth on tree trunks. Shrub morphology also keeps limits where it can reach in the levels of a quadrant, the middle and ground layers (Figure 5). The ground level has a higher diversity of plants that cannot grow up into the middle layers. These include the grasses and ferns
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