A Look Back

Throughout this course we have challenged ourselves with making blog post about things we have participated in during class. Through these blog post I have been able to express my thoughts and opinions on various things using various methods. In this activity we were asked to explain what we thought were our best blog posts and what were our worst. I feel that my best post was my research paper. I felt that this was the best post because it was my most indepth post. I had to write extensively on the topic of fracking. Before the research I felt that I knew almost everything about fracking but through the research I proved that statement wrong.I found out many things about fracking that I never knew about. This project gave me the opportunity to  become very well educated in a subject that I am interested in.

On the other hand I feel that my worst project was the Depict an Energy System. I felt that this was my worst because it was a very minimal blog post. I did the bare minimum and no more. It was also a very bland post because it had so little content and the content that was there was very basic and boring.

Over all I have felt that these blogs have been a very good tool for learning. It creates a platform in which all of the students can see each other's work and can share their learning on an international scale. It is also a great platform because it can be accessed outside of the classroom.

Forest succession lab

We recently used data provided to us that took a census of tree species regarding size and number in given plots of land.  We graphed all of this data, and then the data of specific trees in order to observe the trends in the growth of the forests in these plots of land.

Full Group Data	Total Area=	3,000 sqft
Species	Saplings	Young	Adult	Mature	Old	Over-Mature		Species Density
Black Birch	23	17	0	1	0	0		#VALUE!
Dogwood	10	11	4	0	0	0		#VALUE!
Tulip Tree	5	0	0	0	5	21		#VALUE!
American Beech	8	17	5	7	16	3		#VALUE!
Sugar Maple	578	58	3	0	0	0		#VALUE!
Black Cherry	2	3	5	4	0	0		#VALUE!
Black Oak	0	0	0	0	5	4		#VALUE!
White Ash	0	3	0	0	3	5		#VALUE!
Chestnut Oak	1	0	0	3	15	8		#VALUE!
Red Maple	22	21	4	9	3	0		#VALUE!
Sweet Gum	0	0	0	6	16	27		#VALUE!
						Total Tree Density		#VALUE!

Species	% Saplings	% Young	% Adult	% Mature	% Old	% over mature
Black Birch	56.09756098	41.46341463	0	2.43902439	0	0
Dog Wood	40	44	16	0	0	0
Tulip Tree	16.12903226	0	0	0	16.12903226	67.74193548
American Beech	14.28571429	30.35714286	8.928571429	12.5	28.57142857	5.357142857
Sugar Maple	90.45383412	9.076682316	0.4694835681	0	0	0
Black Cherry	14.28571429	21.42857143	35.71428571	28.57142857	0	0
Black Oak	0	0	0	0	55.55555556	44.44444444
White Ash	0	27.27272727	0	0	27.27272727	45.45454545
Chestnut Oak	3.703703704	0	0	11.11111111	55.55555556	29.62962963
Red Maple	37.28813559	35.59322034	6.779661017	15.25423729	5.084745763	0
Sweet Gum	0	0	0	12.24489796	32.65306122	55.10204082

 

We picked 5 different trees to show their spread across the sapling, young, adult, mature, old, and over mature size differences, in order to show when trees first show up in the forest.  the more old trees that there are, the longer that those trees have been present, making them pioneer species.  we picked Dogwood, Red Maple, Tulip Tree, Black Birch, and American Beech because they all have similar numbers of total specimens, but they vary in terms of size distribution.  We can see that tulip and beech trees are among the first present, while red maple, black birch, then dogwoods followed.  

In 50 years, this forest will have likely changed its dominant species.  The ash, oak, tulip, and sweet gum all had mostly old and over-matured individuals in this plot, so they will likely be less present in the future.  The two maple species both have many young individuals which will likely dominate the forest in the future, while the other species like beech, dogwood, and black birch will also be present, but not in the same numbers as the sugar maple.  Contrast this to 50 years ago, when the beech, tulip, chestnut oak, and sweet gum were the only trees that were present in any sort of size, and we can see the changes that occur in a forest as it grows and develops.  These changes happen because certain trees are better at growing in certain environments.  We can assume from this data that the sugar maple needs a semi-established forest before it is able to thrive, while species like the tulip and sweet gum do better before other trees have come into an ecosystem and crowded them out.  I’m completely confident with the data that we used in the lab because it was provided for us.  There isn’t any source of error in identifying the trees, because this isn’t necessarily a real plot of land, just a set of data.

Interactive Ecology Lab

The first thing we had to do for the activity was to predict the out come of the ecological population over a 100 day window. The prediction that my group made was that one plant would end up killing off the other species of plant  Shown above is the how the population of the plants started out--50% plant A and 50% plant B.

We assumed that this happened because plant A grew over plant B and over time shaded all of the sunlight from plant B which then killed off the plant.

The picture above shows the beginning of the second exercise.  Herbivore A was introduced into the environment.  Herbivore A only eats plant A.  We predicted that plant A would be completely wiped out by Herbivore A which in turn would kill off Herbivore A because of the lack of food.

We were very surprised by the outcome of the environment. The end result was that Herbivore A created a perfect balance between the two plant species.

The last part of this lab was a challenge: are we able to create a balanced system including all of the given animal life?  

The food web above shows the ecosystem with all of the connection connected. The challenge presented to us was to create system so all of the animals and plants live. It took a lot of trail and error to find the best possible system to sustain all life.

The picture above is what the unbalanced system looks like after being run.

With the food web we created we found that plant C died very rapidly. To make sure this didn't happen any more we made no herbivores eat plant C  

The changed food web is as shown above.  Top predator does not feed on two of the three herbivores, and the three herbivores do not eat plant C.

After we made these changes it allowed all of the life to be present in a relatively balance form

R selection, K selection and survivorship curves

The R selection is a type of reproduction strategy are those that place an emphasis on a high growth rate, and, typically exploit less-crowded ecological niches, and produce many offspring, each of which has a relatively low probability of surviving to adulthood. The K-selected species possess relatively stable populations and tend to produce relatively low numbers of offspring; however, individual offspring tend to be quite large in comparison with r-selected species.In general house pets tend to be K selected while house pests tend to be R selected. This is not universally true because there are certain cases when pets can be R selected and when pests can be K selected. For example hamsters rabbits and gerbils would all be classified as R selected species. They are under that classification because they have tendencies to have high growth rates and
a relativity low probability to survive adulthood. It is a little harder to find pests that are K selected species. But in my area deer are considered by many to be pests. Deer fall under the classification of K selected species because they have a relatively stable population and produce a lower amount of off spring. In recent history humans have had a mass increase of life span and a mass decrease in birthing rates. Humans have transferred from being R section species to K selection species and ultimately becoming a dominate species on this planet.