Ari, Zoe, Dru, Erin

Our Process

We experimented with the question “ Does the insect noise vary amongst different treatments on the prairie?”. The prairie we got our information from was the FreeState Prairie which is located behind the football field. It is used by Free State High School students and KU for research purposes. It is a tallgrass prairie. A tallgrass prairie is defined by its tall grasses such as Big Bluestem, Switchgrass, and Little bluestem. Tallgrass prairies have a wetter climate than other prairies and very fertile soil.

We chose our question stated above because we were curious about the amount of insects and how they were affected by the treatments. We decided to see how many insect species were in each plot and how they varied. After running a few tests, we realized how difficult it would be to count all the species. We eventually decided to change our question to what is seen above.

We were interested in the prairie insects because we noticed the prairie was very noisy. We thought that based on the different plot treatments, the insect species would vary between the plots, therefore some plots would be louder than others. We decided to measure the insect noises in decibels. A decibel is a unit used to measure the intensity of a sound.

Since we didn't study any specific species it is hard to know how the insects interact with the prairie. But, like most insects they would be primary consumers.

What We Found

In conclusion, the insect sound does vary based on the different plot treatments. When we measured the sound in the grass only plots the average noise level was about 45.68 dB. In the grass and forbes plot it was about the same with the numbers averaging at 45.84 dB. Now, in the grass and 2x forbes plot the noise was higher with an average noise level at 47.74 dB. It most likely varies because of the availability of plants and flowers.