A student estimates the percentage cover of moss in a woodland clearing using gridded quadrats. The student does not place any quadrats on patches where moss covers most of the ground, so that this moss is not trampled.
How will this affect the mean percentage cover calculated for the clearing?
It will be higher than the true value, because the moss that is sampled has not been trampled.
It will be the same as the true value, because percentage cover is a proportion rather than a count.
It will be lower than the true value, because the areas of densest moss are not sampled.
It will be lower than the true value, because moss cannot be counted as separate plants.
109 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE Biology 6.1 Monitoring and maintaining the environment, covering 6.1.1 Field investigation of distribution and abundance, 6.1.2 Human interactions and biodiversity, 6.1.3 Maintaining biodiversity, and 6.1.4 Environmental change and distribution of organisms. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.