Category: Bibliography

Group Members: Justin Bischof, Demir McRae, and Weihang Ke

Habeeb, Dana, Jason Vargo, and Brian Stone. 2015. “Rising Heat Wave Trends in Large U.S. Cities.” Natural Hazards 76, no. 3: 1651-1655. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-014-1563-z.

Natural Hazards is the official journal for the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards.  As a result, this article is academic in nature and peer-reviewed. The article analyzes the trends of heat waves in U.S. cities over time and the effects it has on the population of these cities.  Although it does not directly address the species found in New York City parks, which is the population our group plans on examining, it does provide insight into possible impacts climate change has on the human population.  It is significant to note that these effects of climate change may very well be felt by species of NYC parks, perhaps even more so than their human counterparts because, naturally, these species lack air conditioning during the hot summer months.  Moreover, the trends analyzed in this article will provide our group with vital information on the of rising temperatures in general. Therefore, it is crucial our group uses this information in our Bioblitz research project.

Hartig, Ellen, Vivien Gornitz, Alexander Kolker, Frederick Mushacke, and David Fallon. 2002. “Anthropogenic and Climate-Change Impacts on Salt Marshes of Jamaica Bay, New York City.” Wetlands 22, no. 1: 71-89. https://doi.org/10.1672/0277-5212(2002)022[0071:AACCIO]2.0.CO;2.

The Wetlands journal is the official scholarly journal of the Society of Wetland Scientists.  This is a peer-reviewed academic journal that has been cited numerous times on similar subjects.  Although the article cited is from 2002, it still provides accurate and imperative information about the negative effects of climate change: namely, the deterioration of wetlands, which provide a habitat for countless species in New York City and throughout the world.  The authors worked in tandem with the Society of Wetland Scientists to outline field studies conducted to determine how quickly these wetlands have been deteriorating. The article itself provides our group with relevant information, as the worsening conditions of the wetlands in New York City is directly correlated with both a declining diversity of species as well as a rising average temperature.

Savage, Amy, Elsa Youngsteadt, Andrew Ernst, Shelby Powers, Robert Dunn, and Steven Frank. 2017. “Homogenizing an Urban Habitat Mosaic: Arthropod Diversity Declines in New York City Parks After Super Storm Sandy.” ESA Journal of Ecological Applications 28, no. 1: 225-236. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.1643.

The ESA Journal of Ecological Applications is a credible, peer-reviewed academic journal that will provide my group with necessary information about the current and potential effects climate change has on the species living in New York City parks.  This article in particular provides the applicable information our group can use to demonstrate the harmful effects of global warming. Specifically, this article focuses on how hurricanes and other superstorms may negatively impact species in New York City.  The article claims these storms—which have been proven to be more and more frequent as a result of climate change—quickly diminish the species diversity in parks across the city. The authors provide accurate knowledge that our group will apply to our Bioblitz research project.

Hetem, Robyn S, Andrea Fuller, Shane K Maloney, Duncan Mitchell. “Responses of large mammals to climate change.” Temperature 1, no. 2(2014): 115-127

Temperature is a peer-reviewed physiological journal that has research papers on the interactions of living matter and temperature. This article talks about the response of mammals to climate change. The ways that animals survive is to evolve or adapt. Mammals, however, do not have the benefit of being able to rapidly adapt or evolve in order to survive. Therefore, the appropriate response for mammals os to leave certain environments with constantly changing climates.

Weins, John J. “Climate-Related Local Extinctions Are Already Widespread among Plant and Animal Species.” PLoS Biology 14, no. 12(2016): doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2001104

This article speaks about linking local extinction to climate changes. We can use this information to see whether certain species became non-existent over time. This article doesn’t specifically cover New York, but we can use the information to our advantage. It can provide a possible explanation for a specific result that we find through our data.

Nogues-Bravo, David, Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez, Luisa Orsini, Erik de Boer, Roland Jansson, Helene Morlon, Damien A. Fordham, Stephen T. Jackson. “Cracking the Code of Biodiversity Responses to Past Climate Change.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 33, no. 10(2018): 765-776, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.07.005

This article talks about trying to find how species and ecosystems will react to future climate change by linking it to past changes in climate. There is some information out there, but there are still gaps in time. We can use this information to see if a change in the biodiversity is similar to one before and provide an explanation as to why the change in biodiversity would occur. Correlation does not equal causation, so using this information would be useful to link climate change and the respective changes in biodiversity.

Javeline, Debra, Jessica J. Hellmann, Rodrigo Castro Cornejo, Gregory Shufeldt. 2013. “Expert Opinion on Climate Change and Threats to Biodiversity”. August 1. BioScience, Volume 63, Issue 8, Pages 666-673. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2013.63.8.9

The authors of this academic paper all have some scientific backgrounds, especially in topics related to climate change. For instance, Debra Javeline has been interested in researching environmental politics and climate change, and she has published articles such as “Expert Opinion on Extinction Risk and Climate Change Adaptation”, proving her authority in writing this paper. On the other hand, Jessica J. Hellmann also has expertise on global change biology, including diagnosis of ecological impacts of climate change. This publishing journal BioScience is a peer-reviewed journal that focuses its papers mostly on biology, public policy, and education. In this paper, the authors conducted a research by interviewing knowledgeable environmental biologists and following some steps of the scientific method. Initially, by observing the temperature gradually rising, they were questioning what the ecological consequences would be due to climate change. Then, a scientific inference was made stating that the larger temperature increases, higher percentages of species extinctions. At a later stage, they even interviewed 2329 scientists consulting with their opinions on the topic of global warming. Indeed, this article mostly concentrates on describing and comparing the surveys conducted to people with different levels of scientific expertise. Despite the fact that there isn’t so much of scientific jargons, it has lots of statistics which further explain the issue of temperature rising. Overall, even though it does not really aim at the parks in NYC, the phenomenon of global warming, as indicated by the term, is a global issue, and at least this paper provides us a general idea of how the biodiversity would be negatively impacted. We will be able to narrow it to NYC and explore more as we research more.

Bellard, Céline, Cleo Bertelsmeier, Paul Leadley, Wilfried Thuiller, and Franck Courchamp. 2012. “Impacts of Climate Change on the Future of Biodiversity”. PMC. January 18.  doi: [10.1111/j.1461–0248.2011.01736.x]

PMC is a journal literature which mostly focuses on articles of biomedical and life sciences. It is a section within the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine, a very reputable and credible organization. Generally, this article discusses the relationship between temperature rising and the biodiversity in our ecosystem. Indeed, climate change can negatively affect the entire ecosystem because it decreases the diversity of population due to the migration. It also includes some charts and graphs to further support their points that climate change would eventually lead to the extinction of species. Additionally, it also touches upon on how the dynamics of metapopulation would be impacted by such phenomenon because metapopulation dynamics also play a role in determining the way species are distributed. Throughout the article, it uses lots of scientific terms and citation to give credit to the authors who come up with the assertions. Therefore, it is such a very reliable source that provides our group with lots of precious information on our topic.

Carey, Cynthia. 2009. “The Impacts of Climate Change on the Annual Cycles of Birds” PMC. November 27. doi: [10.1098/rstb.2009.0182]

Cynthia Carey, the author, is a professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado. In this article, he explains that climate change is a problem caused by human being, destroying the entire global ecosystem. Scientists predict that after several decades, existing animals and plant species would become extinct. This is a powerful sentence that appeals to human asking them to better protect the Earth by avoiding activities such as deforestation, burning fossil fuels, etc. Some of the data in this article are primary, which have been obtained by actually going out and observing the growth of tree rings, the core through glaciers, and sediment samples from oceans. This article also includes a thorough analysis of the observation that lists all the possible outcomes that come along with global warming.

Team Members: Daniel Khaldarov, Mia Zaidi

Felix:

1) R. Geeta, Waleed Gharaibeh. “Historical evidence for a pre-Columbian presence of Datura in the Old World and implications for a first millennium transfer from the New World.” Journal of Biosciences, no. 32: 1227-1244
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12038-007-0132-y

The authors of this article are scientists in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University and the Department of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering at the Jordan University of Science respectively. They describe how species that existed in the Old World through European transfer are still present today in the Americas. These plants have long contributed to the toxic environment that plants are surrounded by, which provides a historical perspective on why some plants are affected by a toxic natural environment. While the article does not go into detail about New York City specifically, it provides a historical outlook on particular species of plants and why the species of plants today still connect to those from centuries ago, in terms of toxicity.

2) Narayanaswamy Tamilselvan, Thirunavukkarasu Thirumalai, Prabakar Shyamala, and Ernest David. “A review on some poisonous plants and their medicinal values.” Journal of Acute Disease, no 3: 85-89
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2221618914600226

The authors of this article are scientists at the Department of Biotechnology in Thiruvalluvar University in India. They describe how certain poisonous plants have beneficial medicinal values that can actually help the environment. By removing these poisonous plants from their surroundings, it helps decrease the toxicity levels and cause the surrounding natural environment to have less of an effect on the other plants. Since we are focusing on the toxicity of plants and the environment and how they affect the overall natural state of NYC parks, this article provides insight into how these poisonous plants can actually be a benefit. This leads into an interesting twist from the BioBlitz data and structure.

3) Dickson Achimugu, Okwesili Fred Chiletugo. “Acute and Sub-Chronic Toxicity Screening of Chloroform Extract of Ficus capensis in Rats.” Journal of Phytochemistry and Biochemistry, Plant Toxicology, no 2.
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/acute-and-subchronic-toxicity-screening-of-chloroform-extract-of-ficuscapensis-in-rats.pdf

The authors of this article are scientists at the Department of Biochemistry at Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University and the University of Nigeria. They discuss how certain poisonous plants that were harming the environment were tested on rats to see if the different plant features were indeed toxic. They tested the chloroform levels of different plants and found that the pants actually had at most a minimal effect on the health and behavior of rats. Being able to test out plants and their effect on the environment on animals provided insight on the extent of the harm that toxicity of plants causes. This article can be used to provide a unique perspective on how plants indeed affect certain aspects of the surrounding environment, more specifically animals. It is evident that animals are affected by the toxic plants, and although this was not tested for plants in NYC, it still does give a glimpse into the plants’ environmental impact.

Mia:

1) Stegelmeier, Bryan L., Field, Reuel, Panter, Kip E., Hall, Jeffery O., Welch, Kevin D., Pfister, James A., Gardner, Dale R., Lee, Stephen T., Colegate, Steve, Davis, T. Zane, Green, Benjamin T., and Cook, Daniel. “Selected Poisonous Plants Affecting Animal and Human Health-Chapter 40.” In Haschek and Rousseaux’s Handbook of Toxicologic Pathology, 1259-314. 2013.

This chapter of the book, “Selected Poisonous Plants Affecting Animal and Human Health,” seeks to introduce some common toxic plants and describe some of the pathologic changes relating to their poisoning in animals and humans, with a focus on livestock intoxication. Such information helps us to understand the potential impact of a high population of certain toxic plants in New York City parks according to our findings.

2) Panter, Kip E., Gardner, D.R., Lee, S.T., Pfister, J.A., Ralphs, M.H., Stegelmeier, B.L., and James, L.F. “Important Poisonous Plants of the United States-Chapter 66.” In Veterinary Toxicology, 825-72. 2007.

This chapter in the book, “Important Poisonous Plants of the United States,” describes some of the most important poisonous plants in the United States-physical characteristics of these poisonous plants and characteristics of the environment which these poisonous plants are prevalent in. The identification of poisonous plants is key in conducting our research of toxic plants in New York City’s major parks.

3) National Institute for Occupational Safety Health, Issuing Body. Protecting Yourself from Poisonous Plants. NIOSH Fast Facts. 2010.

This brief informative pamphlet provides simple methods for people to avoid the harmful effects. It is important to consider how we may reduce incidences of poisoning to prevent parks with high populations of toxic plants from creating harmful effects to its visitors.

Daniel:

1) Kasson, M.T., J.R. Pollok, E.B. Benhase, and J.G. Jelesko. 2014. “First Report of Seedling Blight of Eastern Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) by Colletotrichum fioriniae in Virginia.” Plant Disease 98, no. 7: 995. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-09-13-0946-PDN

This article describes the use of a fungus to stop poison ivy seeds from germinating and killing those seedlings that do with blight. This is a chemical-free alternative for killing poisonous plants.

2) Orlando-Goulart, Camila F. P., Kevin D. Welch, James A. Pfister, Daniel S. Goulart, Adilson D. Damasceno, and Stepen T. Lee. 2018. “Neurobehavioral evaluation of mice dosed with water hemlock green seeds and tubers.” Poisonous Plant Reasearch 1. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/poisonousplantresearch/vol1/iss1/1

This was a study of the toxicity of different parts of the hemlock plant. They found that the green seeds and tubers were the parts of the plant that were potent enough to induce seizures and cause death in the mice.

3) Welch, Kevin D., Kip E. Panter, Dale R. Gardner, and Bryan L. Stegelmeier. 2012. “The Good and the Bad of Poisonous Plants: an Introduction to the USDA-ARS Poisonous Plant Research Laboratory.” Journal of Medical Toxicology 8, no. 2: 153-159. doi: [10.1007/s13181-012-0215-5]

This article is an overview of the Poisonous Plant Research Laboratory, which belongs to the research division of the USDA. PPRL identifies toxic plants and their compounds, their effect on animals and develop strategies to prevent poisoning. It is mainly focused on livestock, but much of the information can also apply to human poisonings.

Group Members: Harmeet Kaur, Ayelet Segal, Pabvitraa Ramcharan

1. Xianjin He, Enqing Hou, Yang Liu, and  Dazhi Wen. 2016. “Altitudinal patterns and controls of plant and soil nutrient concentrations and stoichiometry in subtropical China”. Scientific Reports. April 7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4823659/
   
   The authors of this paper work at the Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, China. All of the authors have written other research papers regarding nutrients found in the soil and food in China and in other regions and about different effects of climate change around the world. This study was published in Scientific Reports Journal, which is part of the larger Nature International Journal of Science. The head of Scientific Reports is Anna Treadway who is a senior publisher with over 16 years of experience publishing scientific research.  The researchers in this study determined the effect altitude has on certain nutrients found in subtropical China’s forest floor litter, fine roots, mineral soil, and soil microbial biomass. They tested for Carbon, Nitrogen and Phosphorous and found that while Carbon and Nitrogen concentrations increased as the altitude got higher, Phosphorus levels decreased. The article also mentioned how mountains are a great indicator of telling how altitude affects soil because of the leveled terrain. Additionally, they discussed the importance of climate change at different levels, like the difference in the number of organisms found in certain areas. Precipitation can cause a species to thrive allowing for certain vegetation to grow and be a source of nutrition, but weather can also impede growth if the soil is too cold or too warm. Their conclusion was that all ecosystems differ and therefore the effect altitude has on soil nutrition is different everywhere. This is a helpful source as we are focusing on NYC specifically and not a broader region. They also provided four informative graphs showing the relationship between the temperature of the soil, the pH of the soil, water content, and water absorption in the soil when graphed with the altitude. Although this data does not apply to NYC, it shows how research on this topic has been done before in different regions and it gives insight into the different aspects we should consider before posing a hypothesis about altitude’s effect.
2. Vigdis Torsvik, LiseØvreås. 2002. “Microbial Diversity and Function in Soil: From Genes to Ecosystems”. June 1. Elsevier: Current Opinion in Microbiology 5, Issue 3, pg 240-245. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1369-5274(02)00324-7Elsevier is a peer reviewed science journal with different subcategories including Microbiology. The Editors in chief are Judith Armitage, a British Biochemist at Oxford University and Virginia L Miller, who works for the Microbiology and Immunology Department of University of North Carolina.  The authors of the paper, work in the Biological Sciences Department at the University of Bergen, Norway. The purpose of their research was to explore the diversity of the microorganisms found in soil, as they believed that a lot is still unknown and needs to be discovered. They mentioned that in one gram of soil 10 billion microorganisms of thousands of different species can exist. Soil is very complex and has a lot of different diffing characteristics. Microorganisms interact and affect each other just as much as they interact with their surroundings. For example, they found that microbial diversity in areas with small soil particles was higher than that in areas with larger soil particles. Competitive interactions also control microbial community structure and diversity as they all need to fight to sustain themselves. This source can be helpful in supplying us with some background information about how microorganisms interact without the added variable of altitude difference. Before we can make any conclusions we first have to learn the basics of the diversity of microorganism diversity and how they act.
3. Janna Pietikäinen, Marie Pettersson, Erland Bååth. 2005. “Comparison of temperature effects on soil respiration and bacterial and fungal growth rates”. FEMS Microbiology Ecology, Volume 52, Issue 1. Pg 49-58. March 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.femsec.2004.10.002All of the authors of this paper work at the Department of Microbial Ecology in Lund University, Sweden. The publishing journal, FEMS Microbiology, publishes a wide range of articles about microorganisms in soil, aquatic and atmospheric environments. The Editor in Chief, Max Häggblom, works at the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers University, New Jersey. This research was specific and was directed at the effect temperature has on fungi and bacteria in particular. The researchers measured the respiration rate and growth rate of both organisms at various temperatures and different starting pHs of soil. Altitude is directly related to temperature so this would help support our research. Fungi and Bacteria showed higher growth rates at temperatures around 25–30 °C. The opposite was seen at lower temperatures. The respiration rate increased over the temperature range showing the highest value at around 45 °C. This source can be helpful in our research if we want to do a subcategory on just bacteria or fungi and narrow our views.  We will not be using their data, however this is a good starting point to review others work regarding a similar topic and how they went about their experiment to get accurate results.
4. Bohlen, Patrick J., Peter M. Groffman, Charles T. Driscoll, Timothy J. Fahey, and Thomas G. Siccama. 2001. “Plant-Soil-Microbial Interactions in a Northern Hardwood Forest.” Ecology 82, no. 4: 965-78. doi:10.2307/2679896.This peer reviewed article has multiple authors who are  associated with an institute or university.  Bohlen is associated with the Agro-Ecology Research Center, Groffman with the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Driscoll with Syracuse University (the department of civil and environmental engineering), Fahey with Cornell University (department of natural resources), and Siccama with Yale University. They conducted their own experiment, in which they were able to compare various factors to microbial biomass such as elevation. Some of the findings they found were that microbial biomass can be useful as an indicator in the differences in N cycling within ecosystem and that different horizons affect microbial biomasses. They also found that there are greater rates of N cycling at higher elevations. Since our project focuses on seeing how or if elevation affects the abundance and diversity of microorganisms, this will be a good resource to incorporate into our data and as a way to understand our data as well. We can also find a way to incorporate N cycling to our project.
5. McGuire, Krista L., et al. 2013. “Digging the New York City Skyline: Soil Fungal Communities in Green Roofs and City Parks.” PLOS ONE. March 1. http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058020.There are many authors of this source, but they are all associated with institutions such as the Barnard College of Columbia, Columbia University, Fordham University, and the Cooperative Institute of Research in Environmental Sciences. They also belong to the department of biology and/or the department of environmental science.  This article focused on comparing soil fungal community mediums on green roofs in New York City to the soil microbial composition in parks within the boroughs. They found that green roofs had multiple diverse fungal communities; however, there were a greater diversity in the microbial communities in the parks. Overall, their results suggest that fungi can play a role in supporting green roofs. This source is useful for our project because, even though we might not be using their data, we are able to understand more about the topic and the research that is already out there. The source even acknowledges elevation as a factor in microbial diversity.
6. Delgado-Baquerizo, Manuel, Angela M. Oliverio, Tess E. Brewer, Alberto Benavent-Gonzalez, David J. Eldridge, Richard D. Bardgett, Fernando T. Maestre, Brajesh K. Singh, and Noah Fierer. (2018). “A Global Atlas of the Dominant Bacteria Found in Soil.” Science 359, no. 6373. January 19: 320-25. doi:10.1126/science.aap9516.Noah Fierer is a Ph.D fellow and professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at the University of Colorado. He, as well as a team of post doctorate, graduate students,  and research technicians known as “Fierer Lab,” attempt to investigate and discover the structures of microbial communities in order to understand their purposes. Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo, for example, is a postdoctoral student for the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. He specializes in fields such as soil microbial ecology and terrestrial ecosystem ecology. Along with his and the vast experience of the team, Fierer Lab explains the core functions of microorganisms and why they believe it is important to identify many of these unknown microbes in the soil. For a total of 237 locations within six continents, which yields thousands of unidentified microbes, the researchers catalogued each new microbe and attempted to understand the functionality and commonness of each one. The scientists found that in half of the soil, only 2% of the bacteria were accounted for and sought to create a list of 511 dominant unknown microbes, such as those of proteobacteria. This article would allow us to understand the true functions of soil microbes, which phylotypes are dominant, and how they benefit the ecosystem and humans, such as the fact that they impact our food by creating fertile soils, growing plants, and consuming and releasing carbon dioxide. It would also help us in understanding why some soil microbes are found in certain areas and why others are not. This eliminates the unanimous contribution of all microbes and focuses on individual ones.
7. Faoro, H., A. C. Alves, E. M. Souza, L. U. Rigo, L. M. Cruz, S. M. Al-Janabi, R. A. Monteiro, V. Baura, and F. O. Pedrosa. (2010). “Influence of Soil Characteristics on the Diversity of Bacteria in the Southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest.” Applied and Environmental Microbiology 76, no. 1, July, 4744-749. doi:10.1128/AEM.03025-09.Helisson Faoro, a Ph.D fellow and expert in fields such as Bioinformatics, Biotechnology, and Molecular Biology at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation’s Gene Expression Regulation Laboratory in Brazil, along with his fellow co-authors A.C. Alves, E.M. Souza, L.U. Rigo, L.M. Cruz, S. M. Al-Janabi, R.A. Monteiro, V.A. Baura, and F.O Pedrosa, are all credible experts in their fields. They analyzed bacterial diversity in the Southern Brazilian Atlantic Forest by collecting soil samples at different altitudes within the forest, such as coastal, submontane, montane, and high montane. After isolating the microorganisms from the soil sample, the scientists found that less diverse bacterial communities were associated with a lower soil pH and lower altitudes. The dominant phylum found included 25.2 % Proteobacteria and 63% Acidobacteria while more than 99% of the species are unidentifiable. Soils with clay have more diverse bacterial communities than those with silt or sand while human activity may account for the lower bacterial diversity at lower altitudes. This study allows us to understand the impact of human activity on the environment, specifically the microorganism communities, distinguish how soil characteristics and types directly impact the microorganism abundance at low, intermediate, and high altitudes, and how such microorganisms are able to survive at extreme altitudes. This may also help us determine the microorganisms’ impact on us, especially due to climate change.
8. Siles, José A., and Rosa Margesin. (2016). “Abundance and Diversity of Bacterial, Archaeal, and Fungal Communities Along an Altitudinal Gradient in Alpine Forest Soils: What Are the Driving Factors?” Microbial Ecology 72, no. 1 July, 207-20. doi:10.1007/s00248-016-0748-2.José A. Siles is currently a Ph.D research associate at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of California, Berkeley while Rosa Margesin, who received her Ph.D in Microbiology at University of Innsbruck is a professor in their area of expertise at the university. Taking climate change into account during spring and autumn, the experts designated four forest sites 545 to 2000 m above sea level in the Italian Alps, characterized by factors such as soil temperature, physicochemical properties like total nitrogen count, and microbial activities like respiration. Ultimately, they discovered that higher altitudes with lower soil temperatures yielded more organic soils with more nutrients, more abundance of microorganisms like fungi and bacteria, but less microbial activities. Archaeal communities did not significantly change abundance due to differing attitudes. This peer-reviewed journal would allow us to understand that although altitude is our independent variable, it may be impacted by other variables such as season, soil pH, soil physicochemical properties, and temperature so we should take those into account. However, the study points out that these factors are correlations, not causations. It also distinguishes the types, or communities of microorganisms, making it easier for us to characterize the data.  Scatter plots and charts represented the data, so this would help us in determining how we would represent our own BioBlitz data.

Team Members: Karishma Malhotra, AJ Johnson

Mark:

1) Peer Reviewed Journal

Patel, DK. 2015. “Diversity of Plants and their Role in Nature.” Journal of Biodiversity & Endangered Species. 3:e125. DOI: 10.4172/2155-6105.1000e125.

The author of this journal is a professor of rural technology at a university in India called Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya. The journal is fairly simple and gets to the point, which makes it useful when interpreting information. Patel writes about living environmental factors such as plants, animals, and microbes, and how they interact with non-living factors such as water, soil, and light. The journal also talks about photosynthesis and the food chain, and how they impact the environment.

2) Peer Reviewed Journal

Pugh, Thomas A.M., A. Robert MacKenzie, J. Duncan Whyatt, and C. Nicholas Hewitt. 2012. “Effectiveness of Green Infrastructure for Improvement of Air Quality in Urban Street Canyons.” Environmental Science & Technology. 46 (14), pp 7692–7699. DOI: 10.1021/es300826w.

The authors of this journal are professors and researchers at well-respected universities. To be specific, they have a focus on environmental science and teach at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and the University of Birmingham. This article will be used in our project because it provides details as to how green infrastructure and biodiversity directly affect air quality. It also focuses primarily on Nitrogen Dioxide and particulate matter concentration in the atmosphere, which are two major factors in air pollution. Lastly, the best reason as to why this journal will be useful is because it focuses on urban cities, which goes well with our research on parks in NYC.

3) Popular Article

Zimmer, Carl. 2018. “‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.” NY Times, July 30.

The author of this article is a very well-known writer and science blogger who specializes in evolution and parasites. He is a graduate of Yale University and has authored numerous science books. This article focuses on how human intervention has been led to an increase in photosynthesis, and how this is not necessarily a good thing. Zimmer goes into detail about how extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can make plants less nutritious, and that more plants will not prevent climate change. The article briefly goes into detail about the interactions between plants and their surrounding environment.

Karishma:

4) Peer Reviewed Journal

Stinson, Kristina, Stuart Campbell, Jeff Powell, Benjamin Wolfe, Ragan Callaway, Giles Thelen, Steven Hallet, Daniel Prati, and John Klironomos. “Invasive Plant Suppresses the Growth of Native Tree Seedlings by Disrupting Belowground Mutualisms.” Public Library of Science, April 25, 2006.

This peer reviewed article explores the effects of foreign invading plant species on the native plants of an ecosystem. While the addition of diverse plants to any ecosystem is usually seen as a progressive change, this article explores the negative impacts by providing empirical data on how aggressive plant species steal resources from existing plant species and invade previously undisturbed ecosystems. The authors are very credible since they all hail from Departments of Biology from universities such as Harvard, Purdue, University of Guelph, and University of Montana.

5) Peer Reviewed Journal

Ebeling, Anne, Sebastian T. Meyer, Maike Abbas, Nico Eisenhauer, Helmut Hillebrand, Markus Lange, Christoph Scherber, Anja Vogel, Alexandra Weigelt, and Wolfgang W. Weisser. “Plant Diversity Impacts Decomposition and Herbivory via Changes in Aboveground Arthropods.” Public Library of Science 9, no. 9 (2014).

This peer reviewed article does a fantastic job of studying the effects of plant diversity on its surrounding ecosystem, and specifically how it indirectly affects decomposition and herbivory. The experiment used to gather data in this study assessed decomposer and herbivore communities, decomposition and herbivory itself and how each was affected by plant diversity. The results concluded that higher plant diversity led to higher decomposition rates and herbivory rates because the plants attracted different communities of herbivores and arthropods. This peer reviewed journal is credible because most authors hail from the accredited University of Jena, Institute of Ecology.

6) Popular Article

Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “Loss of Plant Diversity Threatens Earth’s Life-support Systems, Experts Say.” ScienceDaily. March 24, 2011. Accessed October 29, 2018. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110303153116.htm.

This popular media article explores the effects of declining diversity in plant species on overall ecosystem productivity. This large scale experiment conducted by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science is very interesting as it spanned 5 continents over the last two decades. Scientists were able understand the global impacts of the loss of biodiversity on Earth’s systems because of the large amount of data gathered. This article provides very strong support for our original research question as it asks a similar question and the credible scientists cited had the resources to complete experiments that we completed at BioBlitz on a smaller scale.

AJ:

7) Peer Reviewed Journal:

Swan, Christopher. 2017. “Urban Nature: What Kinds of Plants and Wildlife Flourish in Cities?” The Conversation, June 26, 2017. Accessed October 27, 2018. Urban nature: What kinds of plants and wildlife flourish in cities?

Christopher Swan is an ecologist who specializes in plant life in urban systems. With a focus on the city of Baltimore, Swan’s main focal points in his study are, observing how city residents invest into plant diversity, the most common plants in cities, and the type of species that can survive in an urban environment the best. His article focuses mainly on the impacts of human actions on the biodiversity in the urban environment and how to learn from the past in order to better the future of thriving plant life in overcrowded cities.

8) Popular Article:

Science News Releases. 2012. “Urban Areas Have More Plant Species than Rural Areas but They Die Younger.” Bits Of Science. April 18, 2012. Accessed October 27, 2018. http://www.bitsofscience.org/urban-rural-plant-species-ecosystems-5682/

This popular article mainly focuses on the success of plant life in Urban areas by studying the urban environment of Minneapolis. Recent studies that stated how although urban areas have higher plant life than other areas, they tend to live shorter lives because of human impact and other environmental reasons. With the loss of evolutionary data with these plants dying early, many species are losing out on their opportunity to adapt and evolve from the environment they are in.

9) Popular Article:

Guest. 2012. “Big City Conservation: New York City’s Hidden Biodiversity.” Ecology Global Network. February 20, 2012. Accessed October 27, 2018. http://www.ecology.com/2012/02/20/new-york-conservation-biodiversity/

This popular article published on Ecology reminds us of how many of the world’s largest urban areas were once very rich in biodiversity and nature. However, we are able to see the ways in which urban environments like New York City are changing their ways to become more suitable for plant life to once again grow freely and lusciously. According to the article, although 2/3 of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2025, it is vital to keep biodiversity and plant life protected for the sake of our future generations to thrive on this planet.