Science-report.docx

1 Introduction This is a report about a local environment survey. As a student who determines to major in environmental science and try his best to be a legendary scientist in the future, the author investigated a local forest, in order to collect data about the ecosystem. A grove near the government building of Zhangdian District has been chosen as the place for our field trip. It adjacent to the governments square and surrounded by the moat. It locates in the middle of the city, yet the nearest residential building is 1km far from it, since it belongs to the citys green area and is supposed not to be affected by human. In order to provide a comprehensive survey, the author identified five study objectives, they are: creature classification, creature distribution, abiotic factors, food chain and human impact. Some of the background knowledge will be listed below l Creature classification: to identify the scientific name of species according to the Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species.l Food chain: This is a chain which connect creature in a certain area and shows the relationships between predator and prey as well as the transfer of energy from one trophic level to another. l Abiotic factor: it includes the non-living physical or chemical factors in the ecosystem, like weather, soil, rock, water, air etc. (Biology-online 2008)l Ecosystem: it is a combination of all living creature and their physical environment in a certain area. l .PHl . Salinizationl . Quadrat methodl Trophic level Among all the biotic factors which are able to affect the quality of the local ecosystem, human interference is considered as remarkably important in terms of its capability to deteriorate the environment constantly and irreversibly. The hypothesis will be that even though some artificially planted species helped to stabilize the environment, overall, the chosen area has been negatively affected by humans. 2 Methodology In order to do a relatively comprehensive survey, our group divided the trip into two parts, which are the grove and the river. Samples were taken in both field and different measurements have been chosen to evaluate those fields quantitatively. 2.1 The chosen area Instead of investigate the whole forest which seems impossible since it has an area over 4104 m2 (this is roughly identified with the help of Google Earth, an accurate map), a particular 5 meters times 5 meters area in the grove which contains several types of wild plants and animals has been chosen as our study field. The species in the chosen are is extremely concentrated; therefore, it is considered to be a comparably ideal study field to be investigated. Plants and wild animals in the area were photographed in order to be classified afterwards. 2.2 Abiotic factorsAbiotic factors include water and air quality, soil, rock type and weather condition were well documented. Soil samples are taken in two places and each place the soil is divided into topsoil and soil underground. The only one type of rock being found is a piece of granite covered by cement. The weather condition is observed with the help of a thermometer and a hygrometer. For the water sample, it is collected by a bottom with the help of a willow branch. The water condition is measured in its Ph which is a measurement that can tell the acidity or alkalinity of the water sample. Additionally, since the water is clear enough, the depth of the water is measured with the help of ?.2.3 Species distribution The distribution of species is recorded by using a quadrat, a squared field divided into small blocks by horizontal and vertical lines and marked with numbers and alphabet order. The graph below roughly shows how a quadrat looks like.Graph 1: Graph for the quadrat method 2.4 Food chainIn order to graph a food chain, every square inch was searched and species were identified as many as we can. Animals like spider, snail and bird are photographed first. The possible relationships with them and possible food chain that they are able to form have been come up with by our group afterwards. The graph below shows some animals that we found.Graph 2: Animal samples 3 Finding3.1 Feature of the study site 3.1.1 Physical feature The terrestrial area is mainly formed by soft clay and sand, the topsoil is well fixed by the branches of the roots of grass and trees. The surface of the terrestrial area is covered by withered grass and fallen leaves. The soil near some artificially planted pines is newly refreshed and clearly, it is transferred from other place, since it is soft and the color is relatively dark. The aquatic area is an artificial river surrounded by decorative marble. The river is divided into two parts by an arched stone bridge. 3.1.2 biological feature The major plants in the grove are trees like Fraxinus Bungeana, Pines, and Cypress. Since the area is relatively artificial, animals with a large shape are extremely rare. The major visible animals are arthropods and mollusc like Spiders and Snails. The dominant species for the aquatic area, the river, are alga which lives at the bottom of the river. Visible animals in the river were not observed. 3.2 Creature classification Table 1: Creature classificationScientific name KingdomPhylumClassOrderFamilyGenusSpeciesFraxinus BungeanaPlantaeAngiospermaeDicotyledoneaeOrdo OlealesOleaceaeFraxinusFraxinus chinensis RoxbPinesPlantaePinophytaPinopsidaConiferalesPinaceaePinusPinonPoplarPlantaeAngiospermaeDicotyledoneaeSalicalesSalicaceaePopulus L.Populus bonatii LevlAraneus mitificusAnimaliaArthropodaArachnidaAraneidaAraneidaeAraneusAraneus mitificusPlatycladus orientalis PlantaePinophytaConiferopsidaPinalesCupressaceaePlatycladusPlatycladus orientalisSnailAnimaliaMolluscaGastropodaStylommatophoraBradybaenidaeCathaicaCathaica XerocathaicaThis table above shows classification of six species. They are four types of plants which are pines, cypress, fraxinus bungeana and poplar and two types of animals which are spider and snail.3.3 Food chain and food webSince visible species in the study field is quite limited, the longest food chain is mainly formed by 4 species and therefore, fore trophic levels. The food chain is showed as belowGraph 3: Food chainGrass Mosquito Spider BirdGraph 4: Food webSpider BirdMosquito SnailGrass TreeThe food web is relatively complex; it is formed by 8 food chains, 6 species and 4 trophic levels. The first trophic level is formed by plants like grass and tree, since they are self-feeding creature and are able to provide the basic food for other creatures living in the area. The second trophic level is formed by small herbivore like insects and mollusc. Animals like mosquito and snail belong to this level, for they consume the first level and provide food for bigger carnivores and omnivores. Carnivore is the kind of animal that only eat meat. Spider is an example of carnivore, which forms the third trophic level in the food web provided above. Omnivore is the kind of animal that eat both meat and plants. Bird is an example of omnivore and forms the second, third and forth trophic level, for it not only consume tree but also eat animals like snail and spider. 3.4 Creature distribution The species in the limited area are not evenly distributed, since each species has its inclination and environment preference. The graph below shows the plants distribution in the area in the measured by quadrat method.Graph 5: Plants distributionForm the graph above, it is obvious that those artificially planted spines are regularly distributed. A1 to E1 and A3 to E3 are spines which have the same space between each other. For those wild plants like fraxinus and cypress, the distribution is found totally random. Interestingly, a tendency has been found that those wild plants are more likely to stay and grow together. The gather effect is considered to be beneficial to them, for they are able to maximum the limited nutrition and minimum the illness. Another tendency is that the distribution of plants has a great impact on the location of the animals. This is largely due to the reason that plants are able to provide food and shelter for animals. The shadow they provided enables animals to live in a comfortable and comparatively humid environment. Inversely, plants also benefit a lot from animals. Animal like spider who mainly lives on the tree is good at capturing insects which are considered as natural enemies for those plants. In this case, the existing of those lovely neighbors plays an important role in the growth of those plants. 3.5 Quality of the Environment The quality of the soil was measured by its acidity or alkalinity, salinization, pollution and qualitative tightness. The acidity and alkalinity of the soil sample is measured in Ph. The Ph of we tested is 6, which means it is weakly acidic. This is due to the impact of plants grown on it. For reason unknown, the alkaline material in the soil was absorbed by the roots of plants as the form of nutrition. Therefore, changing the quality of the soil into acidic. Compared with soil harden by salinization, the soil sample is soft and nutritious, which is considered to be good for the growth of plants. The soil sample is not greatly polluted, since it is far away from the garbage ditch. The soil around the garbage ditch is dark and smelly and obviously polluted. The quality of water is measured by its limpidity, ph and pollution. The depth of the artificial river is nearly 1.7 meters and it is clean enough for the observer to see the bottom. The ph of the water sample is about 8.0 which means that it is alkaline. The plausible explanation for this could be that the excreta of creature living in the water and the mineral substance changed the quality of the water. The water is pretty fresh and nearly not being polluted. This is largely due to the reason that the water is for decorating the plaza and therefore regularly changed. 3.6 Human effect The impact of human should be viewed both sides; however, the dominating influence is detrimental. On the one hand, those artificially planted plants stabilize the environment by strengthening the food chain and food web. Generally, the more species in an ecosystem, the more stable the ecosystem will be. In this case, this newly introduced plant will provide extra food and habitat for animals. Additionally, the artificial river also adds the humidity of the air, making the entire ecosystem more comfortable for species to live. On the other hand, the garbage ditch which is not supposed to be here greatly polluted the soil and air in the study field. Not only the area around the garbage ditch be affected but also the entire grove has been markedly polluted. The polluted substances in the soil could be penetrated gradually into the water and the harmful gases could separate into the air. 3.7 Relationship Basically there are three kinds of relationship being observed in the study field. They are predation, competition and cooperation. Generally, the concept of predation it is that in order to get enough energy, animals have to catch another or many species as food. It is straightforwardly showed in the food chain and food web. It appears in different trophic levels. The concept of competition is that in order to get limited resources, creature in the same species or species share the same resource will compete with each other and try to get enough resource. The resource could food, like what happened when species in the same trphic level food on the same species. The resource could also be sunlight or nutrition underground which is valuable for the plants. The relationship of cooperation is a win-win relationship. Usually, it happens in different species and they help each other. The example could be cypress and spider, the cypress provides shelter for spider, in return, the spider helps cypress to get rid of the pests. 4 DiscussionThe methodology and finding addressed the thesis statement appropriately, for most of the study subjects are fully investigated. Different perspectives of the ecosystem and various data have been listed in the finding part and the goals established are considered as acceptable and finally beautifully achieved. The finding positively supports the hypothesis and theories presented in the book. For plants and animals, the number of them is well matched with the theory in the book, which is the population of plants is far larger than the population of animals. The plants belong to the basic trophic level and provide food for animals. The amount of plants decides the whole energy provided and therefore limits the population of animals. Extra animals would not get enough food to consume and forced to compete with each other and eventually reaches a balance. This process observed is the same with the theory of natural adjustment. the species population reduces with the increase of the trophic level. The higher trophic level the species belongs to, the fewer of them will be. Abiotic factors also participate in the ecosystem and play an important role, since them forms various relationships together with species in the area. For abiotic f