Practical Field Ecology: a Project Guide

This book is primarily written as a guide for undergraduate and post-graduate students to plan, carry out, analyse results and write up field-based ecological surveys. It achieves its aims admirably in a clear, concise and reader-friendly manner. It also contains much of value for experienced professional and amateur ecologists.

The range of topics covered is extensive and many of the principles are demonstrated in 14 case studies from all over the world. With such a wide range of topics, not all can be covered in extensive detail. In these situations the authors refer the reader to more thorough sources.

The book is well structured and is divided into six chapters which follow each other in a logical order. The first covers what to think about when choosing a topic for study, determining aims, objectives and hypotheses and carrying out literature reviews. It also deals with practical considerations such as legal aspects, project design and managing the data to be collected. At the end there is a checklist of general guidelines which should be ticked off before implementing the project.

Chapter two covers choosing a study site and monitoring site characteristics relevant to the study such as the habitats and their management, climate, soil or water. It also includes the need to be able to identify the organisms being studied. The third is devoted to sampling static organisms using, for example, quadrats, pin-frames and transects, as well as forestry techniques designed to measure parameters such as tree diameter, basal area, height and timber volume.

The next chapter is the most extensive. It includes an enormous range of sampling techniques for mobile organisms including aerial, terrestrial, aquatic and soil-living invertebrates. All the vertebrate groups are covered in detail, too. The authors also point out limitations and practical problems using some of these methods where appropriate.

Future editions of this book would benefit from including a little more guidance on when and where certain techniques are most appropriate; for example, when the bird territory mapping method once used for the Common Birds Census should be used rather than the transect method of the Breeding Bird Survey.

Chapter five covers the analysis and interpretation of information very well and includes a range of standard statistical techniques which can be used. This section is a good introduction to the use of statistical analysis in helping to draw conclusions and presenting results from an ecological study.

Presenting results and writing up the study is the subject of the final last chapter and again, structured and written in a most helpful way.

I highly recommend this book to all those involved in ecological studies.