Is the soil in one plot more moist than the others?
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VISUAL DIRECTOR- Addie Fulscher
DOCUMENTER- Lauren Wessel
RESEARCHER- Ashley Tilton-Zwiener
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT THE PRAIRIE
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT THE PRAIRIE
The prairie was made for College and High school students to design, create and maintain experiments in the site. They divided the plant prairie grass into 18 plots and 6 replicate plots of each type. Our group used a moistness tester to see how much moisture was in the soil. My group wanted to research how much moisture was in all the plot types because we were curious about how much moisture was in the prairie soil.
ABOUT OUR PROJECT
ABOUT OUR PROJECT
For our project we decided to test the amount of moisture in the soil, and if it's different in each plot/plot type. Although, the data we collected may not be the most accurate because we did have to test in the span of 3 days to get all the data we needed, so the soil was different after each day. We group used a moistness tester to see how much moisture was in the soil. Then, wrote down our data and tested another plot.
OTHER INFORMATION
Soil moisture is an important abiotic (non-living) factor that is necessary for plant growth. Plants are important to an ecosystem because they are the producers in the food chain. This means that they are at the bottom of the food chain. Producers provide food for the primary consumers, which are a food source for secondary consumers and so on. On the prairie, the main producers are tall grasses such as Big Bluestem, Indian grass, Little Bluestem, and Switchgrass (National Park Service, n.d.). The prairie also has forbs, which are types of non-woody flowering plants. Hundreds of different species of prairie plants flower at various times throughout the spring, summer, and fall to produce a beautiful, ever-changing array of colors and textures (Lawrence Free State High School Prairie, 2013).
My group was interested in researching measuring how much prairie soil moisture was in each plot type because we wanted to know how much water the prairie gets. Because water helps plants grow, and plants provide for consumers, we thought this would be an interesting and important topic.
OUR METHODS
OUR METHODS
While at the prairie, first we decided on a plot to test. Once we made it to the plot, we found a spot to dig, usually we walked towards the middle to find a good spot. We had to dig a deep enough hole to be able to put the soil moisture tester into the soil. But, you can’t just put the tester in straight down, it has to be horizontal. Once the tester was in the soil the reader would pop up with a number on the screen connected. We recorded that number, then did it all again at a new plot.
WHAT WE DID EACH DAY
DAY 1: We went out to each plot and dug a hole with a shovel and put a vernier soil moisture tester into the soil to see how moist the soil was. We did plots 6, 11, 17, 20, 16
DAY 2: Tested plots 3, 2, 1, 14, 15, 13, 18, 17 and 82
DAY 3: We tested plots 7, 16 and 9.
THE DATA
THE DATA
CONCLUSION
The soil in one plot is more moist than another. The highest moisture level was in plot 13 which was 24.6 and lowest was in plot 8 with 10.1 moisture level. There was not a single plot that has the same amount of moisture in it compared to another of the same plot type or plot in general. But like mentioned before, our data isn't the most because it took three days for us to test all the plots, so the moisture levels were different after each day. Some things that went wrong in the data collection were sometimes really low like three or four, so then we needed to retest that area. Or we didn’t dig a deep enough hole and we had to re-dig. One of the biggest things that went wrong was that there would be weeds and roots where we dug up so we would have to go to another side of the plot or go farther into the plot for a better place where we could test. We forgot to measure plot four so we don’t have an even number of tests for all the different types of plots.
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