A land lab is an area of land that has been set aside for use in biological

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 studies. Thus, it is literally an outdoor laboratory based on an area of land.

Studies may be elementary or advanced. For instance, students may simply be given the task of identifying all the tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

 species in a land lab, or an advanced student may be doing an intensive survey of the microbial life forms found in a soil

Soil

Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...

 sample.

Land labs are often marked out in plots or transect

Transect

A transect is a path along which one records and counts occurrences of the phenomena of study .It requires an observer to move along a fixed path and to count occurrences along the path and, at the same time, obtain the distance of the object from the path...

s for studies. A plot may be any size, usually marked out in square meters. This allows for more intensive, delimited studies of changes and inventories of biota

Biota (ecology)

Biota are the total collection of organisms of a geographic region or a time period, from local geographic scales and instantaneous temporal scales all the way up to whole-planet and whole-timescale spatiotemporal scales. The biota of the Earth lives in the biosphere.-See...

. Transects are straight lines at which, at intervals, measurements are taken for a profile of the ecological

Ecology

Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

community.

landLAB is a landscape architecture firm in San Diego, California.