Final Presentation!

It has been awhile since the research symposium and I realized I needed to share my final presentation with you! The symposium went very well and I was very excited to share my results from my time researching green roofs! Here it is:

Preparing for the Research Symposium

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...

R Stats Package

Last week Dr. Ohsowski, a professor at Loyola, gave our lab group a nice introduction to R. This week, I have tried to learn a little more about R and to begin analyzing my data in R, but I'm having a hard time. I am hoping to get a little more guidance apart from the internet at this point. I hope by next week I will be back on my way. Until then, I will continue to fight the internet for help! 

Wish me luck!

Spring 2015 Semester Has Begun!

Welcome back! 

The last semester of my college career has begun! I am both happy, sad, terrified and excited for what is next to come. Until then though, I have a lot left to do! This semester I have to analyze all of the temperature and water retention data I have collected on our experimental trays. I am tackling the temperature data first. This week I am compiling all of the data into one excel file and then double checking that it is correct. I will then begin to take monthly averages of our different treatments and compare them. I will do a lot of analysis with this data eventually but this sounded like a good start. 

Additionally, I need to share some pictures with you! Over winter break, Kelly and I took out the ibuttons, collected their data, reset them, and replaced them in their locations. At the CBG experimental site we had a tough time. The soil was frozen over so we tried warming the soil up with a hair dryer which didn't end up working. We ended up working really hard to dig down into the soil with a spoon. We were successful. 

CBG Experimental Site

CBG - isn't it beautiful?

LUC Experimental Site

Working hard despite the cold 

Despite the green roofs taking time to hibernate, a lot of work must be done. Here I go! 

Measuring Water-Holding Capacity and the Fall Semester is Complete!

Good news! I have measured the water-holding capacity of all 80 soil samples from both the Loyola and Chicago Botanic garden sites! Here are the results (more to come later on what this all actually means!):

Graph of Primary Results of Measuring Water-holding Capacity

I've also completed the Fall semester of my senior year! I have one more to go, and I will be continuing research next semester! Next semester, I will focus on learning the statistical package R and analyzing all the temperature and water-holding capacity data. I will present my results in a poster format and possibly a presentation in the Spring at the Undergraduate Research Symposium during Loyola's annual Weekend of Excellence. More to come on this later! 

Tomorrow and the next day, Kelly and I are going to take out and reset the i-buttons at both of our experimental sites before the harsh part of winter freezes them in the soil. I will take pictures to show you all what the other site looks like. Until then! 

Happy Holidays! 

Signing off...

More on Measuring Water-Holding Capacity

I am working hard to measure all of the water-holding capacities of the different experimental trays. I've gotten through over a 1/4 of all the 80 trays! Here is a graph of the first 25 trays from the Loyola experimental site. 

For both Prairie A and Prairie B, adding native inoculum increased water-holding capacity. However, it did not increase it significantly. Once all the trays have been completed, I am going to do significance tests in R with the data so more to come later of the results and analysis of the results. 

Have a great thanksgiving!

Measuring Water-holding Capacity

I've begun taking water-holding capacity tests for all of our experimental trays! The process took some thinking to develop, but once we nailed it down, it was pretty easy going.

Measuring water-holding capacity

The procedure is: 
 

I. Drying Soil

1.     Heat up soil drying oven to 105ºC for an hour

2.     Take bag of soil out of freezer and let thaw

3.     Sample 45 ml of soil and place in aluminum weight boat

4.     Place remaining soil in bag back in freezer

5.     Place the aluminum weigh boat with soil in drying oven

6.     Dry for at least 48 hours

7.     Remove weigh boat and place in desiccator if not used immediately

II. Measuring Water-holding Capacity

1.     Measure and record 40 ml of dried soil alone in a tared weigh boat

2.     Wet a folded filter paper by submerging entirely in a water bath

3.     Let the wet filter paper drain for one minute until it is no longer dripping

4.     Weigh and record the wet filter paper alone in a tared weigh boat

5.     Add the soil to the wet filter paper

6.     Add 50 ml of water slowly and all over to the soil

7.     Repeat step 6 two times

8.     Wait three minutes for the water to drain until it is no longer dripping

9.     Weigh and record wet soil in the wet filter paper in a tared weigh boat

10.  Measure and record volume of water that filtered through

I've already gotten through the first 10 trays which are all Prairie A native plants. The first five are with added native inoculum, the next five are added with sterilized inoculum. The average water holding capacity of the added native inoculated soils was higher than the average of the sterilized inoculated soils for Prairie A! This is great news because for the Prairie A, the addition of native inoculum improved storm water retention!

More results to come later!