Hello!
I know it has been awhile, but I've been busy trying to analyze my data and get my presentation ready for the upcoming Research Symposium which is happening this Saturday!
To catch you up on a few things...Dr. Ohsowski, a professor that specializes in restoration and conservation, graciously agreed to help me analyze my data. He helped me run a linear fixed effects model on the temperature data of our experimental green roof trays. The results indicated that the addition of fungi caused the experimental green roof trays to be warmer than the bare roof in summer and colder than the bare roof in winter. Additionally, sedum was the only plant treatment able to keep the trays colder than the bare roof in the summer and warmer than the bare roof in the winter.
We think that perhaps the addition of fungi to our trays caused the trays to not perform as well as the trays without the fungi in terms of heat reduction and insulation because of the extra metabolic processes the fungi was carrying out. Also, the native plant treatments did not have as much coverage as the sedum (the native plants had around 50% coverage while the sedum had around 80% coverage on average). We think that this may have given sedum an advantage over the native plants in its ability to heat and cool the green roof. Currently, the results do not take this factor in to account. In the future, plant coverage could be accounted for in our calculations.
So this week I will be working on fixing up my presentation which I performed last week to my lab group who gave me a lot of feedback. I'm very excited for the symposium, and I can't wait to share my presentation with you once it is edited! Not too much longer!...
Until then...
