| Explore | We know that when a redwood is cut and you see the rings, you can tell how old they are or if it was a drought year because the rings are closer together. Also that trees use photosynthesis and a byproduct of that is oxygen. |
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| Research Question | What would happen if you grow the same type of tree in different climates? Will both survive or would one die? |
| Predictions | We feel like they would both survive, but one would just have a better condition and the other would be not as healthy |
| Experimental Design | Our plan is to each choose 2 trees at our homes, observe their traits, measure their diameter, assess, their health, find their value, and compare to our groupmates to find the differences in tree value. This information will help us begin our research to find answers to our research questions. |
| Conclusion | The claim we made was, trees can prevent flooding by intercepting stormwater runoff. The trees absorb the excess water that would’ve caused a flood. When calculating our trees values, one cherry blossom tree with a diameter of 13 inches intercepts 585 gallons of stormwater runoff. An oak tree with a diameter of 2 inches, a very small tree, intercepts 94 gallons of stormwater runoff. For a future experiment we could collect data from two different cities with similar weather that have different amount of trees to compare and see if one city tends to have more floods than the other city with more trees. |
| Investigation Theme | TREE |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| Teacher Name | Savanah Rhine |
| School Name | Watsonville High School |
| Session | Spring 2021 |