Introduction





The ecological health of habitats can be cataloged  using various techniques, including soil and water analysis, flora and fauna sampling, and random pairs tree analysis.  Environmental factors such as relative humidity, light intensity, air and soil temperature, and wind velocity may also be measured.

Habitat evaluation of the Clermont campus has been an ongoing project of the Biology Department.  While many areas have been previously evaluated, the Maple Creek tributary had not yet been studied until the spring quarter of  2000.

These data may be used to determine successional stages of the forest.  This catalog of information will be important for future Ecology classes, as the data may be used as a starting point from which to evaluate not only natural change, but changes caused by the adjacent construction or runoff from the auxiliary parking lot.