Physical + human fieldwork

• State the title of your fieldwork enquiry

  How does River Tillingbourne's cross profile change with distance from source?
• Identify your hypothesis

  Width, depth and velocity will increase further downstream
• Outline theory underpinning your work

  Testing Bradshaws model to see if the River Tillingbourne fits it which

  describe i.e. depth increases, width increases and velocity increases
• JUSTIFY: Why is your place good for investigating my question?

  1. Close to field centre so can get there quickly
  2. Safe, accessible survey sites
• Identify two potential risks. How did you manage to overcome them?

  1. Rat urine (Weill's disease) - plaster over cuts, wash hands before eating
  2. Uneven surface in river banks so falling in - sturdy shoes, staff check channel, stay in allocated areas
• Identify examples of primary data and secondary data from quantative data

  Primary - width/depth/velocity data (3 sites)

  Secondary - width/depth/velocity data from Juniper Hall (7 other sites)
• Identify examples of primary qualitative data

  field sketch
• JUSTIFY: Why the two data collection methods

  1. Width data - so can work out our CSA, central to our enquiry question
  2. Depth data - so can work out our CSA, central to our enquiry question
• Describe your sampling method

  STRATIFIED - divided river into upper, middle and lower course and deliberately chose at least 3 sites in each part
• JUSTIFY: why use stratified sampling

  Adv. - to ensure we got a representative sample, sites that are safe and accessible

  Disadv. - Biased
• State two methods you used to present your primary quantitative or qualitative data

  1. Scatter graph (quantitative) - to show how width changes as distance from source increases
  2. Located proportional flow chart (quantitative) - on a map, to display how velocity changes as distance from source increases
• Assess the effectiveness of each method of data presentation in helping you to analyse your results (SCATTER GRAPH)

  Advantages

  • Great visual way of showing the relationship between distance from source and discharge of river
  • Easy to spot any anomalies

  Disadvantages

  • Only a snapshot in time
  • Doesn't show the human interferences
• Assess the effectiveness of each method of data presentation in helping you to analyse your results - (LOCATED PROPORTIONAL FLOW GRAPH)

  Advantage

  • Instead of presenting just graphs, located flow arrows on google maps to create a spatial representation (to show where in the landscape each data set was taken)

  Disadvantage

  • Takes a long time to do
• Identify alternative methods that could have been used to present your data

  1. Use GIS - put aerial photos and overlay them onto a map of River Tillingbourne
  2. Locate channel width bar charts onto a map
• Describe on data set of your results

  TREND - Width increased as distance from source increased

  EVIDENCE - At site 1 near source it was m wide, but by site 10 the width was m wide

  ANOMALY - At site 5 (Shere Church) the river was wider than expected (had been widened as a flood defence technique)
• Describe three statistical techniques which enabled you to analyse the quantitative data

  For width - drew a line of best fit to identify the correlation between sets of data

  For depth

  1. calculated CSA using average depth and average width
  2. calculated the range using the highest width minus lowest width
• JUSTIFY why you used these statistical techniques

  Line of best fit - because it allows us to identify a correlation between two data sets and therefore draw conclusions

  Calculated CSA - tells us about the cross profile which is the whole point of the study

  Percentage increase - show us how width changed over time

  Calculated range - to show the spread of data and how the width has changed
• Suggest an alternative data analysis technique that would improve your fieldwork study

  To improve our analysis of data we could have used a Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient - to test the strength of the relationship of discharge and distance from source
• Outline the conclusion to your human or physical fieldwork

  The river Tillingbourne's cross profile gets bigger as distance from source increases. The channel gets wider and deeper.

  I think that my conclusion is strong because all the data supports
• Describe the most important evidence that supports my conclusion

  The depth and width - calculate CSA
• Explain how you could make your conclusion firmer

  Put right all problems outlined in evaluation
• Describe an anomaly which makes the conclusion less certain

  SHERE CHURCH - river unusually wide (widened and straightened to prevent flooding)