Halfway Point on the biodiversity project

Student 2 Biodiversity Media Project

Biodiversity and ecology is very important in our live. It helps us live and make our lives much more easier. For example, plants are able to clean the air around us by converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. They can also be converted into useful materials in our everyday lives like paper and medicine. But the plant population is decreasing every single day. Many forests are being cut down and there aren’t many trees in urban areas. This is why biodiversity and ecology are important. If we ignore this, many of our resources, like plants, will not be in reach anymore. I chose to do this project to see how much biodiversity there is in a urban place like New York City. I did this by using modern technology like smart phones to collect data.

My first plot is where a lot of biodiversity can be found: Central Park. Central park is very diverse and the home to many plants and animals. Central park is a very big place with about 843 acres of land or 6% of Manhattan (source: http://www.centralparknyc.org/visit/general-info/faq/). The plot I chose was a random choice. Th plot was mostly grass and some trees. The plot was divided by a cemented road for pedestrians. It was a very big plot. On one side of the plot there is a pond and the Delacorte Theater. On the other side of the plot there are many baseball fields. The plot was mostly grass. There was plant on the field which was the clover (Trifolium SPP). Around the plot there were many birds and squirrels.

The second plot was a regular city street. The biodiversity was very low. There were many people walking but the only biodiversity that I found were some trees and very little grass growing in the cracks of the pavement. There were also some dogs but other than that there was not any more biodiversity. The city streets are very interesting to study because it show how humans have impacted biodiversity in a negative way.

Both Central Park and the city streets have many threats to biodiversity but it is obvious that the city streets have much more problems than Central Park. The only problems that I found in Central Park was the paved walkway that intersected two ecosystems and humans themselves. The paved walkway is a problem because animals could get killed due to walking pedestrians and bicycles. The people walking by is a big problem. Children could destroy the ecosystem by riping off grass or leaves from a tree. Humans could take their pets to the parks. These pets could damage the ecosystems in many ways. The streets present many problems like cars, humans, bicycles, etc.

As I did this experiment, I saw my surroundings in a different way. I realized that biodiversity should be a big concern for every single person in New York City and the world. Many people don’t realize that. We use a lot of paper

-Student 02