The differences between primary, secondary and tertiary sources originate from the phenomenon of the created information or the original event.
Primary sources are those that are created very close to the original phenomenon or event like a photograph of an event. It may be created at the time of the occurrence of an event such as photographs, conference papers, diaries, research articles, unrefined data sets or newspaper reports or can be documented later such as memoirs, autobiographies and oral histories. They are used in describing the original research. One of the examples of primary sources in plant ecology include “Patterns of plant diversity at high altitudes on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau” which discusses the patterns of plant diversity as evident in high altitudes. It is a study that carried out a large-scale investigation on vegetation from different altitudes with the main focus being on the high-altitudinal range. It relates to plant ecology as it discusses the abundance of plants at a high altitude.
Secondary sources are based on the primary sources, and they include books or articles which the authors use in interpreting data from the experiment of other research or archival footage of a given event. Other forms of secondary resources include scholarly review articles and review articles. The article “Impacts of desalination plant discharges on the marine environment: A critical review of published studies” is a scholarly review article which reviews different studies in terms of environmental, toxicological and ecological research include the ecological attributes in the environments that receive desalinated water.
Tertiary sources usually synthesize or summarize research found in secondary sources and primary sources, and they include reference books, abstracts, indexes handbooks, bibliographies or encyclopaedia, and they are usually available in numerous formats such as online or in print form. They summarize information in both primary and secondary sources with the aim of providing background on a given topic. Some tertiary resources are not used in academic research; rather, they act as an aid of looking for other sources. “Plant Form: An Illustrated Guide to Flowering Plant Morphology” is a reference book that relates to ecology as it discusses on plant morphology.
References
Bell A.D & Bryan A. (2008). Plant Form: An Illustrated Guide to Flowering Plant Morphology. Chang Science Library (Cook) – STACKS
Roberts, D. A., Johnston, E. L., & Knott, N. A. (2010). Impacts of desalination plant discharges on the marine environment: A critical review of published studies. Water research, 44(18), 5117-5128.
Shimono, A., Zhou, H., Shen, H., Hirota, M., Ohtsuka, T., & Tang, Y. (2010). Patterns of plant diversity at high altitudes on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Journal of Plant Ecology, 3(1), 1-7.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 