Thoughts on Restoration Ecology

Thoughts on Restoration Ecology

Throughout my high school career, I have participated in numerous outdoor service projects that have shown me first-hand what happens when the rapid spreading of invasive plants is not controlled. When I was much younger, I went off to summer camp once school let out to spend time with friends and enjoy the rare views nature had to offer. Unfortunately, I returned just recently to the same camp only to find it overrun run Buckthorn and Rosebush. The forest was infected to the point where you could not walk through simple brush without pants, and those without eye protection were considered brave.

This is where we employ the concept of Restoration Ecology, or, work done with the purpose of accelerating an ecosystem's recovery to its ideal state. In a field trip last week, I went out to Glacial Park with my peers to explore three methods for helping a given area revive the lost native plant species, while eradicating the uncanny invasive ones. To put things simply, a native species is one that belongs to the habitat in which it is found. The invasive species are those that have adapted to compete and destroy the organisms that were present before it, and if native organisms cannot fight back, the ecosystem is essentially taken over.

My group's first job was brush removal and path clearing. We used loppers and hand saws to knock down rosebush and spiny bushes, and then carried these rugged behemoths to a pile, so that they may be burned the following spring. I project that our efforts by the end of the day resulted in 20 square feet clear of anything that could hurt flesh. Not bad work, as shown below.

The first rotation took me to the seed spreading area, where group members walked a given distance and covered any bare spots in the earth with the seed of native species that we'd like to see covering Glacial Park in five years. I made sure to mash the seeds into the soil to ensure that most of them could take root. That's me in the brown flannel if you look closely below.

Finally, I spent the last of my time at Glacial Park making the seeds, as they must be refined from a special dust released on the wind to accelerate reproduction. We took this dust in a cup, and then by rubbing it diligently in our fingers for several minutes, created a fine powder at the cup's base. This product is incredibly valuable, and can sell for hundreds of dollars an ounce. Nevertheless, it shall soon go to the fields, and not into my back pocket.

It is without question that restoration ecology is essential for the maintenance of healthy ecosystems so that the organisms within it can live peacefully and without excessive hardship from human affairs. The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth. And so it is necessary and proper for us to take action and preserve that which is constantly threatened by the daily activity of humanity.

Water Lab

Overview

In the first lab of the year, students were asked to investigate the properties of water by completing a myriad of different activities. Each station's activity exemplified a different phenomenon made possible by water due to its unique characteristics. During my time in lab, I experimented with the following:

Specific Heat of Water

Cohesion and Adhesion of Water

Capillary Action

Specific Heat of Water

Specific heat is a property of matter that describes a substance's ability to resist change in temperature. To see conceptually just how stubborn water can be, I heated a penny over a Bunsen burner to an incredible temperature, and dropped it into a cup filled about half-way with room temperature water. Surprisingly, the water temperature failed to rise even a single degree, as shown below.

Cohesion of Water

Water is referred to as a polar compound. Polar compounds are clusters of atoms with unequal distributions of charge. Water is polar because oxygen (one part of the water formula) is extremely electronegative, meaning it is very good at pulling electrons away from other atoms. Hydrogen, on the other hand, sits at the far other end of the spectrum, where it easily loses electrons and bonds with various elements to make different compounds. When an oxygen atom forms two covalent bonds with two different hydrogen atoms, the result is a slightly negative charge on the oxygen atom and positive charges on the hydrogen atoms, effectively resulting in a polar compound.

Cohesion is Water's tendency to bond with other water molecules. This occurs when a hydrogen atom already attached to a water molecule forms a hydrogen bond with an oxygen atom, because they are positive and negative (respectively). Because water likes to bond to itself, we see water bead up on wax paper instead of spread out or be absorbed, as shown here.

In addition to this, water bonds to itself even on something as simple as a penny, which is why plenty of drops can fit on something so small before the water runs off. However, touching the water droplets with something nonpolar like a soap-covered toothpick alleviates the cohesion phenomenon because polar and nonpolar molecules do not mix. This is commonly seen with oil and water. Once the toothpick ruptured the water bubble, water drained from the penny since the attracting force had been reduced severely.

Capillary Action

Capillary Action is the ability for water to flow through tight spaces without need of assistance from external forces such as gravity. This is only seen with polar substances like paintbrushes or glassware, becuase capillary action cannot occur without adhesion.

Adhesion is water's tendency to bond with polar surfaces. Adhesion is seen when water runs down the side of your cup before it dumps into the sink. Adhesion is also at play when looking at a meniscus in a graduated cylinder. The reason water does not form a flat surface in a glass container is because water molecules are bonding to the glass, thus allowing it to rise on the sides yet not in the middle.

At the station involving capillary action, a small glass tube was placed in a cup of water, which (to my shock) raised the level of water within the tube half an inch above the water level in the basin of the cup. Again, this would not be seen if the tube was not a polar surface, but it was still really cool. Capillary action was also seen when a special paper was placed in water so that only the very bottom dipped beneath the surface. I observed the water move through the paper by means of adhesion, because the colors of the rainbow began to subtly appear up the length of the paper.