Читать книгу Practical Field Ecology - C. Philip Wheater - Страница 46

Ensure the availability of equipment before starting and obtain essential items well in advance of beginning your research project. You may need to allow adequate time to order specialist equipment or materials. If your project requires technical support, arrange this as far in advance as possible.

You need to be as familiar with your equipment as possible before commencing your fieldwork. This includes knowing how reliable it is likely to be under the conditions in which you are working and whether you need to have access to spare components or extra full items of equipment. For example, small mammals will eventually chew through the sides of an aluminium trap and, and they rather more quickly get through the sides of an equivalent plastic trap. Whilst it is possible to patch these up, this is tricky in the field, and therefore spares should be taken. Anything that runs on batteries (e.g. data loggers or light traps) need to be recharged on a regular basis and spare batteries, bulbs, etc. should be available whilst in the field. If you are using multiple pieces of equipment, then you should ensure they are comparable (e.g. different makes of bulb may provide different wavelengths and illumination in light traps, and monitoring equipment from different companies may have different levels of accuracy and resolution). Wherever possible, ensure that identical equipment is used for an individual project. Instrumentation errors may occur if users are unaware of the limits of the equipment (e.g. where attempts are made to estimate between gradations on an analogue scale). Some equipment may require regular calibration against standards of approximately similar values to the variables being measured (e.g. calibrating pH meters at pH 7 for neutral soil and water pH measurements). It is also important to take care of equipment, including protecting it against vandalism, theft, and animal damage (many a moth trap has been trampled by inquisitive cattle when placed in their pasture, and crows and magpies seem to very much enjoy pulling white pitfall cups out of the ground).