Category: Uncategorized

Group: Gregory, Natalie, Yina

Natalie

1. Duffy, John, and Russell Sage Foundation. A History of Public Health in New York City. Russell Sage Foundation, 1968.

This book, written in the early 20th century, provides insight into the various causes of public health outbreaks in New York City. Historically, swine and other livestock were main contributors to health crises, and flies had helped to spread these diseases. However, New York City is no longer home to many farm animals. This might beg the question, why would fly species in New York City still matter? Even though there are few livestock animals left in New York City, the spread of diseases via flies is still a very valid concern, which is what this book touches upon. A perfect example is the Zika virus, which spreads through flies.

2) Decoursey, R M. “THE FEEDING HABITS OF THE FIRST INSTAR LARVAE OF  

How does New York City fly population vary as borough location varies? THE CLUSTER FLY.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 75, no. 1941 (1932): 287.

Cluster flies are a fly species native to New York state, and have been observed in New York City. In order for a species to remain and thrive in one place, it is necessary that the place has that species’ food readily available. This study dives deep into the feeding habits of cluster flies, and how nutrient rich their food sources are. Unfortunately, Baruch does not grant me access to the full PDF so I could not get a full grasp of the article. Once I do gain access to the full article, I think that this source will provide valuable insight into the relationship between flies and the availability of food. We can apply this insight to BioBlitz data by looking at the observed fly species and comparing it to the food that its habitat offers.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/75/1941/287.1

3) http://science.sciencemag.org/content/129/3361/1484/tab-pdf

Lambremont, E N, F W FISH, and S. Ashrafi. “Pepsin-like Enzyme in Larvae of Stable Flies.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 129, no. 3361 (1959): 1484-5.

Stable flies are very common throughout New York State, since they thrive around water. In New York City there are also large bodies of water, such as the Central Park pond, so I would not be surprised if students observed stable flies or stale fly larvae during BioBlitz. This article is similar to the last one in that it focuses on the digestive aspect of flies. Pepsin is an enzyme that digests proteins, and flies are known to have a protein rich diet. This article can help us determine why we might observe stable flies in BioBlitz data.

Greg

1. Lysyk, T. J., L. Kalischuk Tymensen, L. B. Selinger, R. C. Lancaster, L. Wever, and K. J. Cheng. “Rearing Stable Fly Larvae (Diptera: Muscidae) on an Egg Yolk Medium.” Journal of Medical Entomology 36, no. 3 (May 1, 1999): 382-88. doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f

           https://academic.oup.com/jme/article-abstract/36/3/382/919310

This study observed the factors that influence the likelihood of larvae survival. It was   concluded that the presence of certain kinds of bacteria is necessary for the survival of larvae. The density of the eggs however, has little bearing on survival rates. Larvae survival in mixed cultures was lower that larvae survival in pure bacteria cultures. This study will help us account for larvae variations throughout NYC.

    2.  Imbahale, Susan S., Krijn P. Paaijmans, Wolfgan R. Mukabana, Ron Van Lammeren, Andrew K. Githeko, and Willem Takken. “A Longitudinal Study on Anopheles Mosquito Larval Abundance in Distinct Geographical and Environmental Settings in Western Kenya.” National Institutes of Health, April 10, 2011. doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3080801/

This study observed how local environmental characteristics, such as altitude, climate and land use, can significantly impact on phenology and population dynamics of mosquito larvae, and indirectly affect the dynamics of mosquito-borne diseases. The main conclusion of the study was that most mosquito habitats were man-made (moist agricultural environments) as well as grassy areas. We can use similar variables to find how many and the kinds of mosquitoes develop in different parts of NYC.

    3.  Nikookar, Seyed Hassan, Mahmoud Fazeli Dinan, Shahyad Azari Hamidian, Seyed Mousavinasab, Mohsen Aarabi, and Seyyed Payman Ziapour. “Correlation between Mosquito Larval Density and Their Habitat Physicochemical Characteristics in Mazandaran Province, Northern Iran.” PLOS, August 18, 2017.

https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0005835

This study found that characteristics of mosquito larval habitats are important in determining whether they can survive and successfully complete their developmental stages. Therefore, data on the ecological factors affecting mosquito density and abundance especially the physicochemical properties of water of their breeding sites, can possibly be helpful in implementing larval management programs. Such programs can be implemented in NYC as having some kinds of larvae over others is beneficial to the ecology of the city.

Yina

1) Teets, N. M. and Hahn, D. A. (2018), Genetic variation in the shape of cold‐survival curves in a single fly population suggests potential for selection from climate variability. J. Evol. Biol., 31: 543-555. doi:10.1111/jeb.13244

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jeb.13244

This study focused on testing how cold weather affects fly population rates. The study came to the conclusion that fly population dwindles during cold temperatures. Since we are in colder months right now this is an important factor to consider because it may skew our results.

2) Clandinin, Thomas R., and Lisa M. Giocomo. “Internal Compass Puts Flies in Their Place.” Nature Neurosience 521 (May 14, 2015): 165-66. doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.

https://www.nature.com/articles/521165a

This article explains that flies have head direction cells which would affect where they constantly return to. This means that certain flies are more likely to reside within the same location without moving too far. We can use this article because it is proof that flies moving throughout boroughs wouldn’t pose an issue for our project.

Fitzgerald, Judith M., and Robert E. Loeb. 2008 “Historical Ecology of Inwood Hill Park, Manhattan, New York.” The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 135, no. 2 (2008): 281-93. doi:10.3159/07-ra-046.1.

This article was published in The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society and it details the history of the ecology of Inwood Hill Park. This will be beneficial in understanding how Inwood Hill Park got to be the way that it is. It provides a detailed history of the plant life and different species found in the park. This could help gives us a background of what the park was like and we can compare the BioBlitz results to its previous history. We will be able to get a better understanding of the ecology of the park and hopefully allow us to identify recent changes in the environment.

Dittman, Jason A., and Charles T. Driscoll. 2009 “Factors Influencing Changes in Mercury Concentrations in Lake Water and Yellow Perch (Perca Flavescens) in Adirondack Lakes.” Biogeochemistry 93, no. 3 (2009): 179-96. doi:10.1007/s10533-009-9289-9.

Although our focus is on Inwood Hill Park, I wanted to compare the data we found to other areas in New York. This article detailed the relationship between the biodiversity of the fish and mercury levels in lakes surrounding the Adirondack Mountains. It also mentions pH levels in the water and the fish body condition. We hope that this data will contribute to our understanding of our findings at Inwood Hill Park.

Saha, Priti, and Biswajit Paul. 2018 “Suitability Assessment of Surface Water Quality with Reference to Drinking, Irrigation and Fish Culture: A Human Health Risk Perspective.” Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 101, no. 2 (2018): 262-71. doi:10.1007/s00128-018-2389-2.

This article was published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination Toxicology earlier this year and it examined some of the same factors as we were in an industrial city in India. The researchers conducted a multi-purpose Water Quality Index (WQI) in order to “assess the sustainability of surface water for drinking, fish culture, as well as irrigation.” From these studies it was determined that some potent toxic pollutants such as Co, F, Mn, and NO3. These were identified to cause health hazards and also potentially cause damage to the ecosystem. According to the study, “the pollutants were attributed to rock-weathering, industries, agriculture and municipal sources.” Although Inwood Hill Park isn’t considered to be part of an industrial city, it is interesting to compare the results and see how certain factors connect. Our group may be able to use some of this information as reference when analyzing the water quality found at Inwood.

Kisku, Sujit, Deep Sankar Chini, Manojit Bhattacharya, Avijit Kar, Srikanta Parua, Basanta

Kumar Das, and Bidhan Chandra Patra. “A Cross-sectional Study on Water Quality in

Relation to Fish Diversity of Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, India through

Geoinformatics Approaches.” The Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Research43, no. 4 (2017):

283-89. doi:10.1016/j.ejar.2017.12.001

This article was published in the Egyption Journal of Aquatic Research. The authors of the article examined a very similar question to the one we plan on asking about Inwood Hill Park. Their study was on the relationship between water quality and fish diversity in a certain area of India. They used water quality parameters like pH, Temperature, Dissolved Oxygen and salinity to compare to the natural fish diversity in the areas they were examining. We will be examining the water quality parameters of Inwood Hill Park and compare that to the fish diversity. We will be using the Bioblitz data to gather our information we need for our experiment.

Wabnitz, Colette C. C., Vicky W. Y. Lam, Gabriel Reygondeau, Lydia C. L. Teh, Dalal

Al-Abdulrazzak, Myriam Khalfallah, Daniel Pauly, Maria L. Deng Palomares, Dirk

Zeller, and William W. L. Cheung. “Climate Change Impacts on Marine Biodiversity,

Fisheries and Society in the Arabian Gulf.” Plos One13, no. 5 (2018).

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0194537.

This article was published in the Public Library of Science by a group of researchers working in the field of  marine biodiversity. This article is about the effects of climate change on marine Biodiversity, specifically the Arabian Gulf. The article explains how climate change has created significant changes in the environment including sea level rising, changes in temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen. Their study provides an evaluation of all of these environmental changes on the biodiversity of marine biology in the Arabian Gulf. Our group can use their study to help design our experiment and possibly compare result we have to the results of this article. Our research will be similar in the type of date but much smaller in scale.

Parker, Jerrod, Yong Cao, Greg G. Sass, and John Epifanio. “Large River Fish Functional

Diversity Responses to Improved Water Quality over a 28 year Period.” Ecological

Indicators88 (2018): 322-31. doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.01.035.

This article is about a long term study that relates to the topic of our Bioblitz research experiment. This study was done after the passing of environment protection regulation from the early 1980’s  that included the improvement of wastewater treatment. They used this as an opportunity to study the impact of the improvement of water quality on functional diversity of fish. Functional diversity, or FD, is a multi factor way of determining species’ adaptations to certain environmental factors. Their study was done at different locations along the illinois river during its recovery period from 1983 to 2010. The article describes the various methods used to determine the species’ diversity in a given system. We will most likely use this source to help us design our experiment.

Gordon, T. A. C. et al. 2018. “Fishes in a Changing World: Learning From the Past to Promote Sustainability of Fish Populations.” Journal of Fish Biology, 92 (3), pp. 804-827. doi: 10.1111/jfb.13546.

This paper explores the threats that fish populations face today and how humans contribute to these issues both locally and globally. It explains different ways people can promote fish sustainability and build a better future for the aquatic ecosystem. We can use this information for our conclusion and applications for our study. It provides critical evidence to support our reason for choosing this issue and how our research can be applied in real life to promote sustainability in an urban ecology.

Hiddink, J. G. et al. 2008. “Importance of fish biodiversity for the management of fisheries and ecosystems.” Fisheries Research, 90 (1-3), pp. 6-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2007.11.025.

This article outlines the importance of fish biodiversity. It provides information on how fish diversity affects the environment and humans. In addition, it suggests methods to better manage fish diversity through effective government and civilian work. This information can be used in our project to establish a connection between fish populations and the human population. It will answer the question of how humans and fish are affected by each other, and why it’s important we study and maintain fish biodiversity, one of these ways being water quality testing.

Claire Ng, Victor Carranno, and Rinni Sutanto

Topic: How water qualities of body of water differ from park to park in NYC

Claire

“NYC Beach Water Quality.” Maps.nyc.gov. https://maps.nyc.gov/beach/.

Updated by the New York City Government, this source shows data on all of New York City beaches and their weekly enterococci bacteria count. Enterococci bacteria count is the indicator of fecal contamination in recreational water. Such bacteria resides in both animals and humans, but a high count of such bacteria makes water contaminated thus unsafe for humans to be in. Separated into two columns, the data shows the enterococci bacteria count through a “30 Day Geometric Mean” and a whole day count. Since such data is collected by the NYC government and water contamination facilities, the findings are legitimate as well as frequently updated. This source will provide data to compare the water quality of NYC beaches and the specific count and background information of what enterococci bacteria is and how it is used to detect water contamination.

Dellatto, Marisa, and Suzy Weiss. “Just How Safe Are NYC’s Water Fountains?” New York Post. June 26, 2018. https://nypost.com/2018/06/25/just-how-safe-are-nycs-water-fountains/.

A study explained in this popular article from the New York Post tested the water quality of several water fountains from several New York City parks, including Van Cortlandt, Prospect, McCarren, Central, Washington Square, Bryant, Flushing Meadows-Corona and Clove Lakes. Scientists from the EMSL Analytical tested the water to see if there were any signs of unclean water, such as the indication of lead, dangerous bacteria, microorganisms and other chemicals. The researchers, as cited in the article, found no “reg flags” but did indicate turbid waters in all the parks except McCarren, which means murky water. This source provides further data to represent the water quality throughout NYC parks and the organizations that research the cleanliness of such water. This source also indicates some of the basic “red flags” to look out for when judging water quality. Both authors are frequent writers for the New York Post. While Weiss focuses more on on an array of topics, including lifestyle, Dellatto writes more on debunking certain health ideas as well as reporting on health findings.

“New York City 2017 Drinking Water Supply and Quality Report.” NYC Environmental Protection, http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/wsstate17.pdf

This is the 2017 New York City report on the drinking water supply and quality, released by the NYC Environmental Protection issued by mayor Bill de Blasio and Vincent Sapienza, the R.E. Commissioner. This report describes where the city’s water source comes from, how it is cleaned and other restrictions/processes to provide the city the cleanest water. This source will provide a great background and basic understanding how water is supplied and cleaned for the city and its parks and other recreational use. Since this is an official report by the city, this source provides sufficient and concrete data to support our project and the background knowledge that is required for readers to understand the topic.

Victor

Dorn, Sara. 2018. “These New York City beaches are teeming with fecal bacteria.” New York Post, June 30, 2018, https://nypost.com/2018/06/30/these-new-york-        city-beaches-are-teeming-with-fecal-bacteria/

This popular article from the New York Post presents the findings of the New York City Health Department’s studies on bacterial concentration in the water at three beaches in southeast Brooklyn.  The Health Department’s records showed that the Manhattan, Kiddie and Kingsborough beaches along the Rockaway Inlet had more than three times as many bacteria warnings as the city’s other seven public beaches.  High counts of the fecal bacteria Enterococci resulted in swim warnings on 101 days between the three beaches during the summers of 2016 and 2017. According to the article, the Health Department believes that the high bacterial concentrations are due to increased rainfall, which clean-water experts say cause sewage overflows into New York Harbor.  We will use this source to supplement the data we find on the water quality throughout New York City. This article will help us to better understand some of the data as we attempt to interpret it.

Department of Environmental Protection. 2013. “Harbor Water Quality.” NYC Open Data, September 13, 2018, https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Environment/Harbor-Water- Quality/5uug-f49n

This dataset published on NYC OpenData presents water quality data compiled by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.  The dataset includes measurements of several variables related to overall water quality such as pH, transparency, turbidity and bacterial concentration.  The data has been collected at multiple locations along New York Harbor and its various tributaries over the course of many years. We will use some of the data from this source in order to assess and analyze overall water quality throughout New York City.  This data will provide us with several important variables that can help us better understand and determine how water quality varies in different parts of the city.

2018. “New York City Waterfront.” Riverkeeper, October 27, 2018, https://www.riverkeeper.org/water-quality/citizen-data/new-york-city-waterfront/

Riverkeeper is non-profit environmental organization that is a leading clean-water advocate.  The organization is dedicated to fighting water pollution and improving the water-quality of New York’s Hudson River.  Riverkeeper compiles the results of sample water tests taken by citizen scientists along New York City’s waterfront. These sample tests are coordinated by the New York City Water Trail Association (NYCWTA) and are taken weekly from May to October.  The sample tests measure the Enterococcus bacterial count of water at various locations along twelve waterways within New York City’s urban area. Additionally, Riverkeeper compiles rainfall data at these various locations, which is an important variable that is used to understand differences in water quality.  We will use this source to assess the correlation between rainfall and the bacterial concentration of water at locations throughout New York City. This will help us to better understand differences in water quality and what these differences may be attributed to.

Rinni

1. Mukundan, Rajith, Soni M. Pradhanang, Elliot M. Schneiderman, Donald C. Pierson, Aavudai Anandhi, Mark S. Zion, Adão H. Matonse, David G. Lounsbury, and Tammo S. Steenhuis. 2013. “Suspended Sediment Source Areas and Future Climate Impact on Soil Erosion and Sediment Yield in a New York City Water Supply Watershed, USA.” Geomorphology 183 (February): 110–19. doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2012.06.021.

This source is a study published in Geomorphology, a scientific journal that specializes in geology and its effects on life. This is a reputable source that is peer-reviewed and controlled. The authors have proficient knowledge in the sciences and have scientific backgrounds. This source will help our research project in that it discusses the effect of soil erosion on New York City watersheds. The study features quantified data that shows the soil-sediment levels in 891 km2 Cannonville watershed in New York City. The study found that there has been a rapid increase in sediment in the water over the years due to climate change. They have also projected that the sediment levels will keep increasing in future years as climate change intensifies.

2. Dignan, Clare. 2018. “Water Quality Improving in Long Island Sound, Report Says.” West Hartford News. October 02, 2018. http://www.westhartfordnews.com/news/water-quality-improving-in-long-island-sound-report-says/article_332c9dc1-5c65-50de-b872-9b401d2d9e04.html.

This source is a news article published by a local news source. This news article is on the water quality of the beaches on Long Island. Although this is not a source that is heavily based in science, the source discusses in detail the quantitative and qualitative findings of scientists who tested the water. The article references the Long Island Sound Report Card 2018, which was a 10 year study conducted by environmentalists. The source discusses the Oxygen levels, Nitrogen levels, water clarity, dissolved organic carbon, and phytoplankton populations in the waters of Long Island, as well as the trends in the data. This study and report would be a good source for our project, so this article was helpful in that it led us to the study.

3. Spivack, Caroline. 2018. “New York Harbor Is The Cleanest It Has Been In A Century: Study.” Tribeca-FiDi, NY Patch. September 04, 2018. https://patch.com/new-york/downtown-nyc/new-york-harbor-cleanest-it-has-been-century-study.

This source was published by Patch.com, a local New York City news source. Although this source is not the most credible, it references a study conducted by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. This study is permalinked in the article, and it details the findings of dissolved oxygen levels, Nitrogen levels, and bacteria populations in the New York City harbor. The study found that the water is the cleanest it has been in the last one hundred years. This source will be very valuable to our research project because it has a lot of quantified data that we can use to make conclusions about the water quality in different parts of New York City.