Team Members: 

Felix Malamud

Daniel Khaldarov

1) What is the final version of the question you are interested in asking?

How does the population of toxic plants in Inwood Hill Park compare with that in other major parks (with a certain minimum square footage) in NYC?

2) List some keywords to use when searching for related scientific literature. Be specific!

Key words: Toxic plants population, NYC parks 

3) Where will your data come from? Do you need to collect new data? Please describe.

Data will primarily come from the Bioblitz INaturalist database. The Bioblitz database can provide information about where poison ivy has been spotted in the major parks of NYC in addition to Inwood Hill Park.

3) What will you be measuring or comparing? What are the dependent and independent variables?

We will be comparing the population of toxic plants in Inwood Hill Park to that of other major parks in NYC. The independent variable is the location of the toxic plants, and the dependent variable is the population of the toxic plants. 

4) 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.

With existing Bioblitz data collected through INaturalist, we will first identify what toxic plants inhabit Inwood Hill Park by looking through the data collected under the “Plants>Species” section of the database and researching the species to determine their toxicity. Then we will identify the population of these toxic plants identified in Inwood Hill Park and other major parks in NYC.

5) Why is this question interesting to you? Why should others care about this topic?

Knowing if Inwood Hill Park or other parks in NYC have an abnormally high or low population of toxic plants can indicate whether or not there is a need to regulate the growth of such toxic plants in certain areas to maintain a healthy environment.