Background

A few weeks ago we started learning about ecosystems in biology class. We soon learned we were also doing a project on  it too. Lucky for us, Free State High School has a very cool prairie ( Free State students, 2021) behind the football stadium. The prairie is split into 18 plots and has a lot of cool plants and animals for us to learn about. My group grew to wonder how the soil in each plot in the prairie was different, and how the diverse plant life affected the soil it grew in. 

The Free State prairie is a perfectly functioning ecosystem, thanks to the Free state biology staff. The Free State Prairie has lots of energy flow within its food chain. Since there is a lot more diversity in plants than animals in the prairie. Which also affects the trophic levels. (second, third, and fourth trophic levels), and decomposers. Organisms in food chains are grouped into categories called trophic levels. Roughly speaking, these levels are divided into producers (first trophic level), consumers (Kim Rutledge Melissa McDaniel Santani Teng Hilary Hall Tara Ramroop Erin Sprout Jeff Hunt Diane Boudreau Hilary Costa, 2022).

Methods

My group's method was for the Research lead to dig the dirt up and put it in tiny cups  for half of the plots we used while the visual lead took pictures and the documenter wrote down notes. Then the next day we did the same thing but the research lead did the other half of the plots that we didn’t do yet. Then we added water in the cups with the dirt still in it and made it into mud then used a pH tester to test the pH.

Data

Conclusion

From working on our prairie project the last few weeks we have learned that forbs creates a higher pH(potential of hydrogen) balance. The plots that contained only seeded grasses tend to have a lower pH balance around 6.3, while the plots with seeds and forbs average a pH level of about 6.9, and of course the plots with grasses and 2x the amount of forms averages a PH balance of 7.0.

Bibliography

References

HIGHSCHOOL, & Freestate students. (2021, January 17). Free state High school prairie. Free state High school prairie. Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://sites.google.com/usd497.org/fshs-prairie/home

Kim Rutledge et. al., 2022