Investigating biotic factors influencing abiotic factors
Purpose:
To investigate the relationship of the temperature of the soil and the soil moisture around a tree.
Independent Variable:
- Distance from the tree
Dependent Variable:
- The temperature of the soil around tree
- The moisture of the soil around the tree
Controlled Variable:
- The distance between each hole
- The direction from the tree
- The radius of the hole
- The depth of the hole
Materials:
¨ Soil auger
¨ Shovel
¨ A stake
¨ A hammer
¨ Lab Quest
¨ Temperature Probe
¨ Moisture Probe
¨ A tree
¨ A notebook
¨ A pen or pencil
Method:
- Gather Materials
- Find a tree
- At the bas of the tree poke a hole with the stake and hammer
- Put the temperature probe in and record the temperature at the side of the hole
- At the same spot using the soil auger create a hole remove all grass (for an accurate result)
- Put the soil moisture probe and cover the detector with soil and pat it down
- Record your findings and continue steps 3 to 8 over and over again every meter
Raw Data:
| Distance | Temperature (° C) | Moisture (%) |
| Base | 11.3 ° C | 6.2 % |
| 1 meter | 12.7 ° C | 4.9% |
| 2 meters | 12.4 ° C | 8.7 % |
| 3 meters | 12.1 ° C | 11.8 % |
| 4 meters | 11.7 ° C | 12.1 % |
| 5 meters | 11.3 ° C | 14.1 % |
| 6 meters | 10.9 ° C | 15.3 % |
| 7 meters | 12.8 ° C | 5.0 % |
Processing and Presenting Data:
Evaluation and suggested improvements:
Overall, the experiment went smoothly. We worked well as a group, and we were all cooperating. We have really accurate data, but we did encounter many problems while doing this experiment. First, we realized that there was a funny pattern involving the temperature and moisture of the soil in our data. The reason why this is happening because our group realized that we were heading to another tree every meter we went away from the tree, so that affected our data. These are some possible ways we thought that we could improve the data collection. To make sure that the investigation was more accurate, we could of picked a tree that was isolated, so that other trees don’t affect our data. We could of also brought a meter stick so that when we were counting 1 meter from the tree we wouldn’t have to use the stick from the butter fly catcher net, and that would have made our data more accurate.
Conclusion:
So, when looking at the facts, it is evident that biotic factors affect abiotic factors in very big way. This is because as you would notice in the data table and the graph as you moved away from the base of the tree the temperature of the soil kept on decreasing while the moisture of the soil was increasing. The reason why the temperature is decreasing is because the tree assimilates heat and the farther you go away from it the less heat it absorbs. In the second part of the temperature graph, the temperature starts to increase because we are getting closer to another tree and since it assimilates heat it increases the temperature. The moisture increase because the tree absorbs water to perform photosynthesis and so the farther you move away from the tree the more water there is, but the reason it decreases in the end is because we are getting closer to another tree. And this clearly shows how biotic factors of an ecosystem affect the abiotic factors.
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