Lab No. 5: Germination and Productivity

Introduction

SEED students discussed about wheter or not a plant can germinate in the dark, based on this, raddish seeds were used to look for answers. Two containers with 36 plots each one were exposed to the sunlight, while other two cointainers were put in a dark closet for a couple fo weeks. This report pretends to show what was the general hypothesis, and the question to solve. Also will be showed the experiment students did, the data collected, and its steps.

• Hypothesis

Seeds need light in order to germinate.

• Question

 Can seeds germinate in the dark?

Part 1. Seed Germination

DATA FOR DARK TREATMENT GROUP

Step 1. Your group will receive a tray of 36 samples (6*6). Write down:

    a. How many seedlings germinated per sample? 50
    b. Number of seeds originally planted per sample: 144

Step 2. Now you can calculate the percent germination of the seeds.

% Germination=     (Total germinated seeds / Total planted seeds)  * (100)                                    
% Germination=     (50/144) * 100
% Germination=     34.7 ~ 35%

Part 2. Write this a s a blog entry. Please type a few sentences to answer each of these questions and turn them in.


    1. What was our CONTROL for this experiment?

Seedligns that growed on the light (because it is known that seeds can germinate on the light)

    2. What is the percent germination for the LIGHT TREATMENT? For the DARK TREATMENT?

        % Germination on Dark treatment:  34.7 ~ 35%
        % Germination on Light treatment:  47.9 ~ 48%

The data for the Germination of the light treatment was courtesy of Lilian Xitumul and the integrants of her team.

% GERMINATION GRAPH 

AVERAGE WEGHT GRAPH

AVERAGE HEIGHT GRAPH

Part 2. GPP and NPP

a. Record the weigth (mass) in grams of all the seedlings from your group.

8.9 grams

b. Place all your sprouts on a piece of aluminum foil so they are laying side by side (not mounded up in a pile). These group of plants were dry out for 5 minutes at a temperature of 400º F. After that, the weight was:

1.9 grams

GPP for the Dark treatment 

GPP before drying out the seedlings                      GPP after drying out the seedlings.

GPP = NPP + R                                                               GPP = NPP + R

GPP= 8.9 + 8.9                                                                GPP= 1.9 + 1.9

GPP = 17.8 grams                                                             GPP = 3.8 grams

                                                       GPP for the Dark treatment 

GPP before drying out the seedlings                      GPP after drying out the seedlings.

GPP = NPP + R                                                               GPP = NPP + R

GPP= 11.4+ 11.4                                                                GPP= 2.0 + 2.0

GPP = 22.8 grams                                                             GPP = 4.0 grams

Marmot Dam Field Trip

The Marmot dam was built by PGE (Portland General Electricity) in order to generate electricity, but after interrupting part of the Sandy River (which comes from Mt. Hood) for almost a century, the dam was destroyed in 2007 as an experimental procedure which has been observed and analyzed to gather information about its effects on its ecosystem. Another part of what I learned on this field trip, was that this really will help fish habitat (that used to migrate to the salty part of the water close to the beach) and other organisms to survive. Another reason why the dam was destroyed is because it was not worthy to maintain a dam that did not produce enough electricity as before, and also following the new and strict regulations made to protect salmon habitat, PGE would have to invest even more to help salmon migrate to the bottom of the river trough the dam; it just was too expensive, so the dam was destroyed.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS ), March 18, 2007. Marmot Dam

One of the concerns that environmental organizations and PGE had when they decided to destroy the dam, was that fish living downstream could be buried by all the sediment accumulated on the dam, so they collected wild salmon and save them on a hatchery and then released into the river after the dam was totally removed, this action protected fish population. About the amount of sediment accumulated, this did almost nothing. Thanks to storms, all the sand, gravel, etc. were digested quickly and it did not expand in a large area. Below you can observe a video about it.

After the demolition of the Marmot dam, PGE donated the land where the dam was to organizations that want to conserve and protect this land. In one side of the Sandy River, you can see how the trees look younger than the forested area from the other side. It also looks harvested because the area was used for logging. Now that this land is under protection, we can say that is going through a secondary succession process since the land was already there, the only thing people worked on was on applying fertilizers to improve soil quality in order to reforest the area with native trees (the area is starting to recover). Compared to the other side, I observed how it has a greener and forested place, there is mostly cedars and the ground has a thick layer of woody debris and really reddish and soft soil, which are great signals for a very good forest! 

Would things be the same as before? Who knows, but this is an important starting to care about nature, its course, its connectivity with everybody else. Human kind probably should leave nature as pure as possible I think, but unfortunately that is not realistic, neither possible, we need from natural resources. What we should learn is how to peacefully interact, and manage the natural resources in a sustainable way.