SIMply Prairie Quadrat Study

Notes for Prairie Experts

Hints - Prairie Expert Notes - Educator Notes

SIMply Prairie is a student research project that has the potential to link classrooms in areas where the prairie once flourished. We seek to establish a network of prairie sites where students can conduct quadrat studies and contribute their data online to an ongoing study of the prairie plant populations of native and reconstructed prairies.
SIMply Prairie Student Homepage

What does it take to become one of the SIMply Prairie study sites beyond Internet access?

Set aside a student prairie study site: In the fall, usually mid-September to mid-November, students will work in the prairie conducting quadrat studies. Depending on the number of students involved, the prairie will get more or less trampled. You need to feel comfortable letting them do so.

Provide information to update the prairie plant database: In order for students to add data from your study site to the central plant database, you will need to ask the database manager to add the names of any local prairie and non-native plants not already included. If you have not done a prairie plant survey at your site, you may want to invite teachers or student-group leaders to join. You will also need to provide information on the prairie and the particular study area and prepare a data collection sheet for your prairie. Send e-mail to prairie-data@fnal.gov to get a username and password.

Preparation for data collection and entry.

Sample prairie information form

Organize a local program: What you need to do depends on whether or not you already have a local program for students and their teachers/leaders. A program can be as simple as working with one class or group or as complex as having several groups visiting the site each day in the fall as Fermilab does. There are a lot of instructional materials available. Contact Fermilab prairie-data@fnal.gov for ideas. (Also see Notes for Educators.)

Help students conduct their quadrat study: Important to SIMply Prairie is having a consistent method for conducting a quadrat study and working as carefully as you can with students so they identify the plants correctly.

Procedure used by students at Fermilab for taking data.

Guidelines on how Fermilab students do percent cover.

Sample data sheet and grid used at Fermilab.

Samples of data taken at Fermilab.

Sample Data Entry Sheet

Hints from Fermilab docents for the quadrat study.