group members: kiara and robert

  1. What is the final version of the question you are interested in asking? How does the water quality in Inwood Hill Park affect the biodiversity of the fish in the area?
  2. List some keywords to use when searching for related scientific literature. Be specific! When searching for related scientific literature we will use key terms such as water quality, fish species, and ph levels and see where and how they all overlap.
  3. Where will your data come from? Do you need to collect new data? Please describe. Some of our data will come from existing research documented online in the databases. This will be mostly background information that will allow us to see what has generally been found in regards to this topic. We will however need to collect new data and test the water samples in different areas ourselves since there is not much data available that is specific to our question.
  4. What will you be measuring or comparing? What are the dependent and independent variables? We will be measuring the water quality at the locations of Inwood Hill Park and the biodiversity of the fish. The independent variable in the research will be the water quality and the dependent variable is the number of fish in the area.
  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. For our scientific research project, we are going to use the BioBlitz data collected from Inwood Hill Park. In particular, we will be extracting information from the sections on fish observations and water quality testings. Using excel, we are going to narrow down which species were found, where they were found, and in what quantities. Similarly, we will use the same excel functions to look at the different water properties tested, like dissolved oxygen percentages and pH levels. We will attempt to draw meaningful correlations and note any patterns between the two sets of data.
  6. Why is this question interesting to you? Why should others care about this topic? Being a city campus, we’d never expect to find such great biodiversity. Of course, we see pigeons and squirrels almost everywhere, but what we don’t see everyday is the marine life. We thought it’d be interesting to explore this realm of urban ecology and get a better understanding of what is living in our waters. People may think, how does water quality in parks affect humans? Why should we study fish diversity? Like we’ve been learning, humans are very much a part of the ecosystem, and everything is connected. Testing water quality can give insight into how we as humans are affecting life for fish. Litter and pollution are major problems in NYC, and it can show in the water of our parks. The ecosystem is fragile, and in order to maintain a homeostasis, we need to understand every aspect, including the fish. How are we affecting them, and how are they affecting us?