Mihais Reflection

The trip to the Glacial Park was absolutely great. It made me appreciate and realize just how important we are both in good and bad ways when it comes to affecting the environment. When we first arrived, we were brought outside in a fenced in area on a hill out looking the park.

It gave me a sense of just how small we really are compared to the environment around us and just how much we affect it. Our guide began explaining to us what their job is. He explained just how important speeding up the process of restoration is and just how long it would take. The park is roughly 3500 acres of trees, brush, bogs and lakes. When walking through, I realized the beauty of this place. It was quiet, serene and seemed to be full of life. We all walked in single file lines and split into two groups. Splitting into these two groups allowed us to maximize our time and do more work. The group I was in first started with planting/scattering seeds and watering trees which had already been planted.  After we had planted scattered and water we moved on to removing invasive species of brush and grasses. Working hard as a group we were able to remove a lot of these invasive species. What shocked me was that we worked for about an hour or so and were only able to do so much. We were also about 30 students who were constantly working, and we barely removed anything. It really just once again showed how little we are compared to our environments. This field trip was definitely necessary in showing what restoring our environment is about. Seeing what the goals are for glacial park and what the team working there had accomplished is great. It showed us just how much more can be accomplished when trying to restore an environment back to its normal state. We were explained to how gophers had started migrating back since the restoration started. This is a great sign as ecologists know that what they've been doing is right. As humans, we have built and expanded and destroyed what was we once had. Now we realize just how important our environment is to us and our survival. Restoration ecology is extremely important and it will save us, there are no negative sides to it. 

Alfredo Salomon

During our field trip to Glacial Park, we were able to get up close with nature and observe and interact with the many plants that grow there. One of these plants was the hazelnut tree. By planting and watering these trees, we were able to do some restoration and help the environment back to its natural state. This would be beneficial to the soil and also to any animals that lived nearby. Planting these trees is our way of giving back to the Earth and helping it restore itself. Also, the clearing and removal of invasive species was another way that we were able to take part in restoration ecology. The removal of these invasive species allows new plants and trees to grow in their place and benefit other plants and animals nearby. Overall,I think that restoration ecology is very necessary, as a majority of the Earth's damage is caused by humans, and I think it is now our responsibility to help speed up the recovery of these degraded ecosystems. The planting of trees and clearing of harmful plants is just one of many ways that we can help the environment return to its normal state and by doing this, we can speed up a process that would otherwise take a very long time. 

Restoration Ecology

On the restoration field trip we were able to experience how much our local environment is tainted by invasive species. And the work that needs to be done in order to bring the environment back to what it once was. We removed foreign invasive species that were in a sense choking out the naturally occurring original plants. We also worked to replant and nurture oak and hazelnut trees because they were the plants that should be there, instead of the ash trees and brush.

 

Here is one of the local growing "Nutella trees" (hazelnut tree), we went to all of these and watered them with 2 gallons of water each. These trees were planted in a field along with other oak saplings. Another task we had was to plant acorns rebound these trees in the hope that some more trees would grow.

After we watered the trees we went over to remove the invasive species. We learned very quickly that there are tons of thorns that are ready to prick you. We hacked and chopped away at all the unwanted brush in order to free up room for the naturally occurring plants. And anything that we chopped down we put on these big burn piles. The piles will be burned later in order to keep the plants from just re growing. Also the burning helps the carbon cycle releasing all the stored carbon in the plants into the air via smoke.

I learned that we as humans have a massive impact on the enviornment around us. All the invasive plants that were there would never have gotten there if they weren't carried by us from all diffrent places. Because we came here from all over we brought all diffrent plants that pollenated and started taking over the land. When this all happens they start to kill off the naturally occurring plants which in turn slowly kill off the local wildlife because their food source is gone. This is why we have restoration, to make sure that the invasive species do not completely take over and kill off everything.

Now as I have just explained is why we have restoration ecology, but I have a sort of difficult question. What does it actually matter? Lets say that we just let these invasive species take over and all the natural plants and animals are wiped out. I guess what I am saying is "so what?" Is there any real reason other than just the moral obligation that we feel that we need to fix the damage we essentially caused?

-Eddie Graham

Acid/Base Lab

Purpose: The Acid/Bases lab was designed to show and prove how acidic or basic a mixture is. The drops of .10M HCl (acid) and the .10M NaOH (base) were the two independent variables which changed the pH of the mixtures. We were trying to find out how certain materials, such as orange juice, would react to different amount of a certain base or acid.

Introduction: Different solutions have different reactions to different acids and bases. Some solutions may have a different resistance to some acids and bases than others. This allows us to see the change in pH and the total buffer range. The buffer range shows us just how resistant the solution was to the acids/bases added. This is"

Methods- during the experiment we used the "Lab Quest 2" PH sensors to test how the PH was effected when acidic and basic solutions were added to certain materials. We measured the change in PH for every five drops of an acidic or basic solution that we added to two seperate samples of our material to be tested. We then tracked the changes in PH (rise or fall) as the basic and acidic solutions were added. The data was graphed using the Lab Quest 2 devices. The graphs will be Shown below.





Data:

pH of Water

pH of Orange Juice

pH of Gelatin

Graphs and Charts: Blue = Base    Red = Acid

pH of Water

pH of Orange Juice

pH of Gelatin

Discussion: In our experiments our tested materials were water, orange juice, and gelatin. When the water was tested the solution started out roughly as a neutral solution. As the acidic and basic drops were added the PH level was drastically changed. Within ten drops there was a six PH difference between the water with the basic solution and the acid solution. And by the end of the thirty drops there was over an eight PH difference. This shows that water is highly effected by the outside additions of things of different PH. Where in the orange juice solution it started off mostly acidic and then only varied a little. The added acidic solution made the orange juice PH lower only slightly, there was only a .25 PH difference. And in the Basic solution there was a bit of an off reading. the graph dipped quite a bit, and then slowly climbed up back to normal, and then gained only .04 PH. This shows that the orange juice had very little variance in PH, there was only a variance of .26 PH. Lastly we did the experiment with a gelatin solution. This solution started off with a mostly neutral PH. Then as the different PH of solutions were added there was a variance in the PH. Unlike the orange juice the gelatin and the water were very affected by outside additions to the solution. They both ranged greatly in variance in PH but the orange juice resisted change very well.

Conclusion: The orange juice acted as the best buffer out of the 3 solutions. Its pH resisted change, even when drops of HCl and NaOH were added to it. The water was the poorest buffer because its pH changed the most when the drops of HCl and NaOH were added to it.

Refrences: We did not really use other outside references.