Last week, though nerve-wracking at times, was certainly rewarding in that everyone finally got a quick rundown of all the research projects being conducted by our peers. Being a visual learner, I appreciated the fact that diagrams and models were incoperated into every explanation, as it made it much easier for me to grasp some of the more difficult concepts. Still, plenty of the chalk talks went way over my head (even after the 8 minute explanation), so of course the one that sticks with me the most is one that involved the least amount of foreign words and concepts: Courtney’s.
As most of you know, Courtney and her baby trees are looking at the way that drought and rising sea-levels, a by-product of global warming, affect a plant (or 25 plants for that matter) and it’s ability to germinate. Most people grasp the concept of drought killing off plants due to lack of water, but I still find it interesting that in coastal areas, the presence of water that doesn’t belong there, though water nonetheless, is doing all the damage. The implication of Coutney’s project is really a no-brainer because plants are the base of almost every land food chain. Side note, wouldn’t coastal plants would be involved in even more food chains once you factor in land food webs and aquatic ones? Wouldn’t that make these plants even more important? Anyhow, it’s understood that if you compromise the base of the pyramid, the whole thing collapses, so if all our plants start to wirther away into nothingness, so do our animals and so do we. Since I really like living and I also really like eating, I felt personally connected to her projects and its findings. On a more serious note, I also really liked Courtney’s project, because I am extremely interested in the environement and the issues that humans pose to it, but also because I partook in similar research in high school in my AP Environemental Science class. Of course, our project was way less sophisticated and we certainly weren’t using 25 different plants. However, the end goal of both projects were the same.
Because we can’t even get all Americans to agree that global warming actually exists, let alone do something about it, I think it’s important that we begin looking at the implications of this issue and see if there are ways to combat the damage that it is doing to our ecosystems, which is why I think Courtney’s research was so great.
* On a side note, I liked Courtney’s plant drawing even before Dr. G made it have leaves.
