Our pond is pretty healthy, and the abiotic testing results have continually improved, except for the Phosphate count. Also, our diversity number was very high. We had 10.6. However, the number of indicator species has declined by a significant amount, which shows that the pond is less healthy than before. So from all the information above, our pond is not the healthiest one. But it is doing alright; still pretty healthy. As we said in the hypothesis, we expected a low number of Nitrates, leading to a high numbering for dissolved oxygen. And we had a high diversity of species. But we had a little higher count on Phosphorus.
Also, our pond is incredibly resilient. The number of disturbances it has encountered is impressive. Every time the biodiversity levels and abiotic numbers have rebounded back to what they were before. We also saw a lot of important keystone species, such as frogs, mayflies, and crayfish, which helped ensure the cycles continued.
Overall, this project was interesting. It feels good to be outside and doing some studies. I have done things like this, so it was easy for me. Only a few mistakes showed up. Just a review of some old studies I did a few years ago. It was a great experience, a great group, and everyone did something to help out the study. We work through the problem together. To make sure our data was correct, the whole class came together and ensured the data was accurate. Thank to my amazing teammate Tony Hu and Jackson Etheridge.