The insulating role of seagrass banks on the ground
These data were collected on 30 April 2023 at 10am at Chott Meriem. We recorded the temperature (climatic variable) of the soil.
Investigation approach of the experiment on the insulating role of seagrass banks on the ground
1. The questioning: "Does Posidonia oceanica allow to reduce the soil temperature?"
2. The hypothesis: Posidonia banks are recovered by farmers to be used as mulch above their crops. We therefore assume that they have an insulating role and that they also help preserve soil moisture.
3. Materials:
- 1 temperature sensor
- 1 arduino uno board
- 1 grove shield (optional)
- IDE arduino application on computer
- Posidonia banks (dead posidonia washed up on the beach)
4. Experiment:
- Create a program via the arduino IDE application on the computer that will display on the monitor the temperatures captured on the ground by the temperature probe
- Make a first series of temperature measurements on a soil without dead posidonia
- Make a second series with a ground covered with posidonia
- The data captured by the sensor are displayed on the monitor of the arduino IDE
- Compare the data obtained by displaying them in an Excel sheet
5. Results :
We entered our results in an Excel spreadsheet to represent them in the form of a graph :
6. Interpretation of the results:
We can notice that the temperature of the soil which is not covered by posidonia is about 2 degrees higher than that of a soil covered by a thin layer of posidonia which is already significant. The banks of Posidonia can reach several meters high. We can therefore affirm that the Posidonia banks constitute an effective soil insulator, and thus help to fight against global warming. We could not measure the humidity of the soil in the 2 experiments because our sensor was damaged, but according to the scientific publications to which we had access, we can also affirm that the banks of posidonia preserve the humidity of the soil thus supporting the development of the cultures