Nick's+Journal

1st visit

free: This is site is a pretty good place to study because, first of all, it is very close to the school, so therefore, we can travel there easily without a problem. Also, there are a lot of plants, (brown and green) living in the area. At last, we are able (if we do have time) to help the people at this area keep the habitat living well. With this place being close to school, it takes a lot of problems out of our hands. First of all, since it is very close to school, it can be easily accessed after school quickly, with just a 5 to 10 minute walk. Secondly, being this close to the school, in case you needed any quick information from the internet, (wikispaces) you can just walk down back to the campus area, and obtain connection to look for what it is you need to find. Since there are a lot of plants and trees, it makes my observations a lot easier. With many trees and plants, it not only shows that there may be many animals to observe, but also you are able to find a lot of plants to observe. With this many things to observe, you should have a lot of observations to help your studies for biology. Not only are there plants and animals, but there are even rocks that have pretty good information too. The rocks and plants often times work together and can help find more information for biology. At Rocky Hill, there are people who take care of the area. With the area we are doing for biology being there, we can also help the habitat live on. With us helping the habitat, it can give us a different perspective of the place, therefore helping us with even more information on our semester project. Also, if we do have any question of anything, we can ask the people who take care of it if I need to know the name, origin, or any other fun facts for this place. This is why this area is a good place for our biology semester project.

Assigned

Seeing that there are a lot of plants, but little amount of animals, does not help me much with the niches of this habitat. But perhaps this means that there is another type of niche that is yet to be discovered. The main organisms that have niches in this area seems to be the plants and trees within the place, as well as the bugs in the area. First of all, the plants seems to have a pretty broad niche. They all need water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide. Since they all are in the open, they all easily obtain sunlight from the beaming sun, and the water from the rain. The carbon dioxide, well, that's easily obtained as well. All of these, what is seemed to be, easily obtained factors of there niche, is what keeps them alive and going. I noticed, that there are a number of bugs around, mainly observed from seeing the eaten leaves. That right there shows one of the factors of the bugs’ niche. So, seeing that, their niche must have plants to eat from, first of all. I did not notice seeing many different bugs, or many bugs at all, so I could assume that whatever minimal number of bugs live here, have quite a broad niche. They, most likely obtain there water from the rain that falls onto plants in little droplets. In this habitat, there seems to be quite a small issue of predator and prey. The predator being the bugs, and the prey being the plants. Simply put, the bugs just eat and make holes within the leaves, which, do not seem to have much of a defense mechanism to fend off the attacking bugs.

2nd Visit Free write In my trips to Rocky Hill, I have found a limited number of observations. I noticed that first of all, there were many holes on a lot of leaves and perhaps prove that therefore, there must be some form of animals such as bugs or even mammals and other small organisms. Also, the tress seemed to have different colors. One thing I did notice that was quite interesting to me, was a chair on the hill side of the mountain. Also, there were a lot of vine-like plants holding up big boulders. When I had found holes in the leaves of the plants I have been observing, I immediately concluded that there were other life forms in this area. After finding that, I have been looking around quite a lot for information or perhaps other details of where these animals could be. But, I only had found a snail shell as perhaps what could be, evidence for life forms being in this area. The plants in this area seemed to be quite interesting to me. On my way up the hill, almost every plant was a grayish brown color and I thought could be perhaps dead, but I do not know for sure. Then, when I had gone up to the Rocky Hill, I had found a lot more green plants around. Perhaps these plants well fed and better off than the brown ones, I still do not know for sure. One of the species of plants though, did have little brown pods, which I believe is for the species to reproduce. Also, I had noticed that vines were holding the boulders in a pathway! What a discovery, I just could not believe such little plants the boulders could be held from. This could perhaps be a form of mutualism. One sad factor I found though, was a chair on the hill part of the area. This just shows that many of us stupid humans do not respect the land well and may just destroy it faster than it is growing. But aside from that, the observations I had found seemed to be quite interesting and helpful for my semester project for biology!

Assigned Journal

At rocky hill, there seems to be a limited amount of environmental pressures that are destroying the eco-zone. The main thing that worries me is the chair I had found on the hill. Another thing I noticed was there were manmade tracks in this area. Without even meaning to, this eco-zone could die off before we even age past 50! The main thing in this eco-zone that is killing everything off, is the litter. After finding a chair, (seriously, a chair of all things) I had noticed that humanity seems to have a strong disrespect for litter. If we continue on this track of stupidity and continue putting more and more unnecessary man made objects into the natural environment, it will die off sooner than it is to be built up. The trees will be smashed with all this trash, and animals may begin to eat these horrible objects and kill themselves. Another main thing I noticed, but was not necessarily a strong issue, was manmade tracks in the ground. These tracks are not the kind where you get pavement and put it down, but just a track that someone walked by. I noticed there were many tracks that seemed to lead to nothing important, so therefore killed off more animals on the ground or in our way, which did not need to be killed at all. Of course, these factors seem to be quite small, but if we do not be careful of what we do, and not take care of it, we will have more trash then there were plants, and also many plants that were stepped on and destroyed by us trying to just look around. So, we need to watch out for these limiting factors when observing this area, although it may not be helped sometimes, just at least be thoughtful of it.

Visit 3:

Free Journal In this past visit to Rocky Hill, I have not found too much more than before. There are a lot more plants (that are green) than before for sure. I had found that there was that there seemed to be only one type of leaf being eaten. So if there were any other leaves besides the white hibiscus, would the bugs not be able to survive and eat those? This, could be my experiment for this place. Food source for the animals is quite important for any place with living organisms. There seems to be less bugs around too, but I noticed there were more eaten leaves than before. Sadly, aside from the plants around, there isn’t anything else for me to report…

Visit 4: Free journal. The area has simply gotten more and more lively, full of birds. I would say that from visit 3 to visit 4, the population of birds had doubled! The plants in general had also grown a lot, becoming more green, as well as bigger. There weren’t a lot of bugs and other animals visible, but I have not seen that throughout the whole time I had visited them all. I had tested the leaves, to see which one had kept its greener color the longest, since I realized that the white hibiscus leaf was most often consumed, or showed signs of consumption. Here are my results:

5 10 15 20 25 Hibiscus 1 1 1 1 2 small smooth leaf 1 1 1 2 2 small jagged leaf 1 2 2 2 2 Time passed: 5 10 15 20