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!