Group project inaturalist

Group project inaturalist

1st post: Idea site: https://www.outdoors.org/conservation/climate-energy/citizen-science

Background : Eastern U.S has been known to have one of the worst air qualities, that not only makes it difficult for hikers to explore mother nature while hiking, but can also negatively affect a hiker’s respiratory health due to the polluted particles floating around the atmosphere. Luckily, within our area, are provided a dozen of hiking trails that makes it possible to visually see and discover

the nature around us.

Proposal: The mission of this experiment is to observe and identify as many plants, flowers, trees during one’s hike. If anyone has ever gone hiking, we can all agree that some parts of the trail will always be shaded, while other parts are fully exposed to sunlight. The temperature/ humidity varies, which made me think, “Will there be different types a specific type of pattern or build within each species that inhabits a different temperature “region.” Although all these plants inhabit the same mountain, the idea of this experiment is to see if there are any obvious difference in build between each plant group found in different areas.

What to chart down?

Observe the region. Will the region have constant exposure to sunlight? Will it constantly be shaded by a mountain? Low/ high elevation?

Estimate temperature

Identify and chart down in the iNaturalist app, ten different types of plants within each region.

Chart down their build/ color/ height,etc.

Within each region, identify if there are similarities among the build.

Hypothesis :

The groups of plants observed within each different region will have similar characteristics that will easily be identified, and this is what allows them to prosper.

Questions :

Does the temperature and amount of exposure from sunlight directly affect the plants height ?

Does human contact and accessibility to the plants affect their survival rate ?

What’s the estimated amount of different plant groups you are able to identify within each region ?

2nd post: Group Project Proposal: It will be similar to both the Wildcam Gorongosa Review and iNaturalist.

Hypothesis: The temperature and the location will determine the likelihood of spotting one species a lot more times compared to other species at the same location or around the are with similar weather changes.

Questions:

1. Cities surrounding a city that squirrels (or any species likely to be spotted daily) are often seen during the day, will also have spotting of squirrels around the same time of day if one were to go to a park or walk around the neighborhood.

2. What is the correlation between temperature and a species population growth throughout the span of a couple of months in different but similar locations.

3rd post: I thought the iNaturalist project review was pretty interesting. I’d like to continue the review portion of the assignment and go in depth.

some considerations:

Can the same organisms be found around the different cities? (includes parks, hiking trails, backyards,etc.)

Narrowing it down, find an organism that can not be found anywhere else and figure out why that may be (food source, temp difference, population)

I haven’t decided which one to focus on yet so a group could definitely help me figure out what’s next once the project idea has been set.