The organisms I intend to study are predominantly people and domestic dogs. I’ve set myself up alongside a paved walking path next to the lake. I’ve been measuring weather conditions, including rain volume, temperature, pressure, light, humidity, and subjective observations (example: sunny, overcast, rainy, etc). I’ve given a consistent 15 minute period each day where I count the numbers of birds, people, pets, and any other animals that pass through or into the area during that period.
During my period of establishing the best means to complete this study, I attempted several locations as well as times of the day. For location, I attempted a spot near the playground, a spot along the walking path, and a spot near a floating bridge. Ultimately, from these spots I opted to stay in the spot along the walking path as I overheard a couple discussing how they didn’t like going over the bridge during the rain as it made their dog slip due to the texture of the wood when wet and I found that a lot of children near the park were very interested in discussing what I was doing with all of my weather measuring tools which I worried would make some of their parents apprehensive about frequenting the park.
The other gradient I explored was time period. I wanted to be consistent about the time I visited each day to avoid variability. I explored 07:00-07:15; 14:30-14:45; and 17:30-17:45. I ultimately opted for the 17:30-17:45 period as I personally did not want to wake up early enough to attend the 07:00 time slot, and work would prevent me from attending the 14:30 time period outside of weekends. Whilst attempting a few of these time slots, I noticed the variation not only in the number of people who came through my field area, but also the percentage of those who were walking dogs. The morning time seemed to be predominantly dog walkers and joggers (many of whom were with dogs also). The afternoon had almost no dog at all, but many seniors who were strolling through the park. The evening had a mix of both. This led to my official hypothesis and prediction.
I believe that more people will visit the park during periods of dry weather than during periods of inclement weather; but also that those who visit during the periods of inclement weather will be a higher percentage of those accompanying dogs than those without dogs when compared to the percentages during the drier/warmer days.
My predictor variable will be the weather conditions and my response variable will be the number of people and pets travelling through the park. These variables are continuous, not categorical.
