Ask A Scientist General Science Archive

 
name         Branne
status       student
location     TN

Question -   What tools do ecologist use to do their work?
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It depends on the type of work you ae doing.  I did much
field work with plants in the canyons of Utah.  I was studying how those
plants use water and light, and so I used a lot of equipment designed
for water and light measurement.  Here are some of the things I would
take with me on a typical day:
Field marking tape
Long tape measures
Maps to my field sites
Shovels (ecologists facetiously call them "geotomes")
Taxonomic keys
A field press
A couple of different light sensors
A Scholander bomb (measures water potential in leaves)
Nitrogen tanks
A porometer (measures transpiration in leaves)
Leaf sample envelopes
I would also check the semi-permanent equipment I had set up in the
field, including weather stations and soil psychrometers (measure water
in soil).

On other days, I would be measuring photosynthesis rates, so I would
have a gas exchange system and Carbon Dioxide tanks.  Back in the lab, I
used lots of other equipment, including more sophisticated gas exchange
systems and a mass spectrometer for studying stable isotopes in water.

Most of this equipment was highly specific to my work.  Other ecologists
would have a very different set of equipment, depending on the organisms
they work with.  Ecology is a very broad discipline; if you visit twenty
different ecologists in their labs and field sites, you will see twenty
very different collections of lab and field equipment.  I encourage you
to visit a local university and see what tools the ecologists there are
using.  If you set up an appointment, most scientists will be happy to
show you around their labs.

Christopher Perkins
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Ecologists use a very broad range of tools because some of them
look at individual organisms and how those survive and get energy
from their environment while others look at a global scale so they
must use tools that measure on that scale.  So some ecologists
count how many mice a rattlesnake eats but might also use radio
transmitters to track how far they range in a year and make maps
of when and where they ate and when and where they moved.
Others use the movement of what are called stable isotopes--
different non-radioactive weights of atoms.  When plants or
animals use different nutrient sources the stable isotopes in their
nitrogen and carbon and sulfur differ enough to measure--so
ecologists figure out where those plants or animals are getting
their nutrition by the "signature" of the stable isotopes in their
bodies.  This takes mass spectroscopy to measure the stable
isotopes.  Others use meter sticks and cordon off areas of streams
or valleys or mountainsides to figure out what life forms live and
visit these areas.

Jeannine M. Durdik
Professor of Biological Sciences
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Ecologists can use a long, flexible measuring tape to measure tree girths,
or make grids to count how many trees are in each grid. They use instruments
to test oxygen levels in the water, different particles in the water, and
temperature meters. Microscopes are used to look at the microscopic
creatures that live in the soil and water. Soil moisture and temperature
meters are also used. These are just some of the tools ecologists will use
when in the field.

Grace Fields
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