Plant Results

The purpose of this experiment was to gain insight on how climate affects vegetation of the shrub Vaccinium vacillans. Different latitudes and elevations were manipulated in order to determine the role they play in growth. Latitude and elevation both impact the amount of sun light a plant receives and ultimately impacts the temperature that a plant grows in. The further a species is from the equator, or the greater the latitude, the less direct sun it receives. Oppositely, the higher the elevation the greater the amount of direct sunlight received (Gurevitch 2006). For this experiment, it was hypothesized that within a region, the vegetation at high elevation will resemble the vegetation at high latitudes. Furthermore, it was predicted that a widespread, common species will show parallel changes in abundance as elevation increases and as latitude increases in New England.