Project:

How does urbanization affect rates of plant species in New Rochelle, Manhattan, and Brooklyn?

Students:

Marcus Agrippa, Sabrina Essman-Freeman, Sheriff Sesay

School:

Brooklyn Friends School, Brooklyn

Mentors:

Paul Brauchle

Abstract:

In addition to altering plant life, current urban environments emulate extinction events through the stimulation of rapid evolution. Environmental changes in water stress, herbivore activity, sunlight availability, and other factors shift which traits are optimal in any given plant population, leading to genetic change and adaptations over time. For our project, we wanted to explore how our neighborhoods varied in terms of plant life. We wanted to explore this because we all attend the same school but live in different communities. We wanted to see how our different areas actually vary in Manhattan, New Rochelle, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The exploration of these different places can show us how different and how similar our communities really are, and how urbanization can show us how similar and different plants can be when they are growing in different locations.