Group Members: Harmeet Kaur, Ayelet Segal, Pabvitraa Ramcharan

  1. What is the final version of the question you are interested in asking? 
    1. How does altitude affect the abundance and diversity of microorganisms found in soil?
  2. List some keywords to use when searching for related scientific literature. Be specific!
    1. Microbial soil
    2. Effects of microorganisms on the environment
    3. Effect of altitude on microorganisms
    4. Importance of microorganisms
    5. Physicochemical properties of soil
  3. Where will your data come from? Do you need to collect new data? Please describe.
    1. Our data will come from previous BioBlitz data, as well as the data collected from this year’s BioBlitz. This year’s BioBlitz data for microbial soil will be available by the first week in November.
  4. What will you be measuring or comparing? What are the dependent and independent variables?
    1. We will be measuring the amount/diversity of microorganisms present within soil found at different altitudes.
    2. We will compare the abundance and diversity of microorganisms found on higher altitudes to those found on lower altitudes.
    3. The dependent variable is the amount of microorganisms, while the independent variable is the altitude those microorganisms are found on.
  5. Please make a list of your methods. If you are using existing BioBlitz data, you do not need to describe those data collection methods on this worksheet, but you do need to describe how you are extracting the relevant data from the entire BioBlitz data set.
    1. Soil sampling: collecting soil found at different altitudes and having the lab analyze them (lab work is taken care of by those in charge of BioBlitz)
    2. Researching the topic of how altitude affects the diversity and abundance of microorganisms found in soil.
    3. Applying previous years BioBlitz data to our data, by looking at all the microorganisms (and quantity of each) was found on different altitudes.
  6. Why is this question interesting to you? Why should others care about this topic?
    1. We don’t learn much about microorganisms in school. This may be due to the common phrase, “out of sight, out of mind” since the microorganisms are literally out of our minds as we cannot see them. So, this project helps us learn more about microorganisms and where we would be able to find more of them in soil. Others should care about this topic because microorganisms are important to our ecosystems. They break down substances, like dead plants, into simpler substances which release gases that are necessary for other organisms to survive.