Project:

Biodiversity of Plants in Highly Polluted Areas (Year 2)

Students:

Megan Navarro, Nira Ward, Tseten Lama, Rosalia Minyety

School:

Frank McCourt High School, Manhattan

Mentors:

Vincent Joralemon

Abstract:

The research topic of our Urban Barcode Project proposal is to understand the biodiversity of plants by identifying and observing changes in the native and non-native plant samples taken during the summer, fall, and winter season. We want to keep working on last year’s research, therefore we will be using data and the same methods from last year’s proposal. The four of us, Megan, Nira, Rosalia, and Tseten, will complete this project by going to the Riverside park near the Henry Hudson Parkway and collecting a sampling of different species. We will extract 20-30 leave samples from 3 distances from the highway: 5 meters, 10 meters, and 20 meters. We are going to be focusing on what type of plant species we are able to find and compare them to how the number of species is affected by the seasons of the year. We will analyze if there is a change in invasive species vs. non-invasive species based off of each season.

Poster:

Team samples: