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How Does M owing A ffect the Diversity of Plant Life?. Mateusz Borowiecki Athavan Balendran Marcus Katz Eesh Dadheech. Hypothesis.
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How Does Mowing Affect the Diversity of Plant Life? Mateusz Borowiecki AthavanBalendran Marcus Katz EeshDadheech
Hypothesis If the ground is not maintained, then there will be more and bigger species of plants because none of them will be killed my technology such as mowers and weed killers. ------------------------------------------------------------------- So we believe that an area that is regularly mowed will have fewer types of plant life than an area that is not regularly mowed, since mowing prevents the growth of large plants, and the agitation caused by mowing may adversely affect other plants.
Experiment Design • We will use eight (8) identical hula hoops (diameter: 72 centimeters) to mark out our test areas. • We will have four (4) samples for both mowed and un-mowed space. • Our test areas will both have more or less the same amount of sunlight and will be as close to each other as possible. • Since no-one in our group is a botanist, we will distinguish separate types of plants purely on how they look.
Variables Independent • Mowing/Location. Half of our experiments will be in a mowed area, and half will be in an un-mowed area. Dependent • Number of types of plants. We believe that mowing directly affects how many different types of plants are present in an area. Constants • Sunlight. We will try to choose areas with similar levels of light. • Size of area we search. For both mowed and un-mowed, we will search the area covered by four identical hula hoops. • Search method. For all eight test areas, we will search them using the same method; that is, have our whole group search the hula hoop while another writes down what they find. • Climate and temperature. The areas are relatively the close and therefore these factors remain the same. {And temperature remained close to the same in the 45 minutes}
Experiment Diagram Unmowed Area Hula Hoop (Unmowed) Baseball Diamond Fence (separates mowed and unmowed areas.) Hula Hoop (Mowed) Mowed Area
Results! Number of Plant Types Present Area/ No. of Hula Hoop
Conclusion • Based on the test results, our group believes that mowing does indeed adversely affect the diversity of plant life in an area. • Looking at the data, we can see that, on average, the un-mowed areas have 3 or 4 more types of plants than mowed areas. • We believe that our findings are much like the actual population. Just looking at an un-mowed field, one can see much more plant life than on the average front lawn that has been regularly mowed. • If we were to repeat this experiment, the one thing we would definitely change would be having more testing areas. We only had a total of eight this time, and we believe that if we had had more test areas, we would have achieved much greater accuracy.
