Abiotic factors which include climate are known to affect plant growth. Elevation which influences the climatic conditions can directly affect the tree height. The trees in higher elevation are thought to be shorter than trees in lower elevation because of the low temperatures which directly affects the height of trees. The experiment was done to ascertain tree height difference and to fulfil the deadline. The hypothesis for the experiment was that trees in lower elevation grow taller than trees at a higher elevation. The methodology for the experiment included measuring tree height in high and low elevations. Tree height was measured using a field tape measure, a trigonometry and a clinometer, then there was application of a specific formula to calculate the tree height. For data sets were collected form low elevation and high elevation trees. The height of high elevation trees ranged from 16.89 to 22.67 and low elevation tree height ranged from 12.98 to 21.79. A t-test was carried out on the obtained data and the t value was +0.39, with a degree of freedom of 6. The two tailed p value obtained was 0.71 which is greater than 0.05 and thus it showed that there was no significant difference in tree height in trees from high elevation and trees from low elevation. In conclusion, the hypothesis for this experiment was rejected meaning the height difference between the two elevations was not significant. The experiment indicated that elevation did not significantly affect the tree height in high and low elevations and this can be attributed to the low temperatures which directly affect the growth patterns of trees but do not significantly affect the height. The climatic factors which accompany high altitude therefore did not make high elevation trees shorter as compared to low elevation trees.
Raw data
Graph 1. Shows the different height of trees from high and low elevations.
F-Test for the Significance of the Difference between the Variances of the Two Samples
T-Test Assuming Unequal Sample Variances
Source: http://www.vassarstats.net/.
