Research Project

 Question: What temperature does the vegetation decrease most?

Background Information: 
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/weather/tempeffect-plants.html

Hypothesis: If I continue to take data of the amount of green vegetation until winter, then the amount of vegetation will decrease dramatically because of the low temperatures which will cause the plants to slowly stop growing.

Materials 
- camera
- vegetation 
- laptop
- adobe photoshop 
-bright colored string

Controlled Variables:
 - same camera
 - same location of pictures
 - same person taking the pictures
 - same angle of picture taken
 - same type of vegetation

  

Procedure: 
Step 1: Go out into a highly vegetated area (not only grass) and bring bright colored string. 

Step 2: Find three different areas in which you can take a picture. 

Step 3: Mark each area by tying a bright colored string to the place in which you will be standing to take the picture. 

Step 4: Take a picture of each area. 

Step 5: Save the photos to your laptop. 

Step 6: Put the photos into Adobe Photoshop and create a grid on top of them by going to View<Grid<Show. 

Step 7: Annualize the photo to see what percentage of the photo has vegetation in it by seeing how many squares have green in them. 
Step 8: Record data in a document and save the photos in a folder for later.
Step 9: Continue steps 1-8 with all three photos. 

Data Table

Graph

Conclusion

My data supports my hypothesis because as the cold temperatures began to arrive, the plants slowly began to die because they do less photosynthesis. Every time I went outside, the vegetation slowly dwindled and became less and less present. The first visit I had, everything was completely green, and by the last visit, you can see from my chart there was a significant drop in green vegetation. The biggest drop of green vegetation was from the 4th to 5th visit, it was from an average of about 65% to an average of 8%.

If I were to do this experiment again, I would put a smaller grid over top of the photos to get more accurate results from every trial. Also, I would change the area of every location where I took the pictures to a place where the environment around them were more similar (sunlight and water availability) and take the picture more angled downwards at the ground rather than having some trees and sky in the picture. By doing these things, I would get more accurate data.

I got the results I did because when there are lower temperatures, the plants can not do as much photosynthesis. This is because the enzymes responsible for photosynthesis have very little energy so the process of photosynthesis goes much slower. When they cant do photosynthesis very fast, they stop growing. If the temperature reaches freezing point, it can be very harmful for the plant and cause it to die. This all connects to my results because as the lower temperatures arrived, the plants slowly thinned out and eventually all died because it reached freezing point.

Sources: 
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/weather/tempeffect-plants.html
http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/content/filerepository/CMP/00/001/068/Rate%20of%20photosynthesis%20limiting%20factors.pdf