Deadline of submission

An electronic copy of your final Report must be submitted to the TurnItIn submission box on Moodle by 2359hrs 04/05/2025. Late submission will be penalized: late electronic submission will be capped at p1 up to 5 working days late, and awarded f-5 for more than 5 working days late. The above penalties may be waived with formal evidence of extenuating circumstances (e.g. a letter from a GP/Doctor), see https://my.napier.ac.uk/Student Administration/Extenuating%20Circumstances/Pages/Extenuating-Circumstances.aspx for info. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have back-ups of your assessment throughout the process. Problems with computer or files, e.g. hard drive crash, memory stick loss, are not acceptable.

Arrangements for submission

You MUST submit your report to the Turnitin submission box via the link on the Moodle site associated with this module. If you do not submit your essay to the TurnItin submission box by the deadline, you will receive a grade of f-6 and therefore fail this assessment. Do not use your name anywhere in association with the document – submissions are graded anonymously. The filename for your submission (the saved name of your document) AND the Submission Title to TurnItIn MUST be your matriculation number. Please ensure that you submit the correct file to the correct portal. If you submit the wrong file to a portal, and request a resubmission prior to the submission deadline – replacement can only be done if the filename is your matriculation number, and will incur a penalty deduction of a single grade point.

Include a Titlepage that includes your matriculation number, a creative title, and a word count [excluding Tables, Figures, Table & Figure legends, graphics, Reference List, Appendices]. Number your pages and include line numbers throughout. Failure to follow any of the above will result in a penalty deduction of a single grade point.

Take care to acknowledge all sources of information (providing citations in-text and a full Reference List at the end) and express everything in your own words. You MUST follow the Guidelines for Referencing Practice (using the APA) and the Use of TurnItIn (posted on module Moodle).

The requirements for the assessment

City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) have commissioned you to prepare a report (for them) that critically evaluates biodiversity data from six Edinburgh sites, and recommend three sites for conservation. CEC have surveyed species diversity at the six sites, employing a technique of invertebrate pitfall sampling. Pitfall traps (filled with 10% ethanol to a level of 2cm) were sunk along a line transect at 10 metre intervals within each site (n= 10 pitfall traps per site). Pitfall traps were positioned at all sites on a single afternoon, and collected synchronously at all sites 48 hours later. CEC requires you to critically evaluate the data from these sites, and recommend three of the six sites for conservation. The other 3 sites will be destroyed!

CEC provide you with an Excel spreadsheet (“CEC data”, will be emailed to you via your ENU email) of the species-abundance values for each site (each row representing a species, and each column representing a site).

Evaluate the biodiversity of these six sites. Compare these values with the equivalent values for an already conserved site (site 7), for which individual sample data are available (n = 15 pitfall traps). You must decide the most appropriate analyses to conduct and present, briefly justifying your decisions in the Methods section. Within Recommendations, you may critically reflect on method/data and suggest potential improvements to enable more informed decision-making. You are writing for a non-specialist audience – the CEC Planning Committee will be reading your report. Do not assume that they are familiar with biodiversity analysis and indices.

Within your report, you should follow the structure and style of a standard scientific paper (e.g Conservation Biology) for Abstract, Methods (including clear description of analysis), Results, and Reference List]. You should not include an Introduction.

Citations should be placed in text and the citations and Reference List formatted following the APA Guidelines.

You should provide your R-code in an Appendix and may include additional Appendices if appropriate. Your R-code needs to be annotated so that a reader can understand the steps being taken. Annotations can be provided as simple statements explaning what blocks of code are for, and should begin with the ‘#’ symbol.

Submit your Excel data file (the one emailed to you) to the appropriate TurnItIn portal on Moodle. Please also include any additional spreadsheets with working/analysis that you have conducted in Excel.

Ensure that you analyse the data emailed to YOU.

Special instructions

If you submit the wrong document to the submission portal, and request a re-submission be aware that (i) resubmission can only be done if you have followed the instructions above re. use of matriculation number as your filename, and (ii) your resubmission will be capped at a maximum p1.

Return of work and feedback

We aim to provide your grade and written feedback within 15 working days of submission, following standard University policy.

Assessment criteria

To pass the module, you are required to score a minimum p1 grade overall. The Appendix with R-code will be evaluated with the Methods component. The Reference List will be evaluated relative to the relevant sections for the literature cited.

Why this assessment?

Over the course of the module you have considered the justification for, and analysis and interpretation of biodiversity data. You have critically reviewed information and placed or used it within a conservation and management context. This assessment evaluates your ability to use and interpret a standard format biodiversity dataset. Identification and prioritisation of areas (or resources) for conservation is a common theme in the field of conservation biology; this assessment encourages you to demonstrate and apply your knowledge and understanding of biodiversity within a conservation context. This is an applied problem-solving exercise and encourages you to exercise and demonstrate knowledge and skills that are employment relevant.