Patricia Dung, UCLA Science Project Co-Director
Habitat selection, selecting a place to live, is a way that many organisms find areas where they can survive, where there is a favorable match between their physiological and behavioral adaptations, the interactions with other organisms and the abiotic characteristics of the area. For example, a chuckwalla, a Mojave and Sonoran desert lizard, cannot regulate its internal body temperature, because it is poikilothermic ("cold-blooded"), which means that it's body will be the same temperature as the surrounding environment. Temperature regulation is adjusted through a behavioral adaptation. When it is cold at night, the lizard finds shelter. In the morning it emerges from its shelter, vvveeerrryyy ssslllooowwwlllyyy, to find a patch of sunlight (kind of like cats) and absorbs the sun's heat to warm up. When too hot the lizard will find a shady spot to cool down. Since humans are homeotherms ("warm-blooded"), we just freeze and shiver or sweat to cool down.
However, humans also select places to live, although sometimes not very wisely. How can people be more informed about what goes into choosing a home besides how pretty it looks and that wonderful, cost raising, four-letter word - V-I-E-W? Perhaps science can help.
Scenario:
Your group is part of a big, on-line homebuyer's consulting firm. This firm is unusual because not only does it match homes up with homebuyers, it also has scientists of various disciplines on the staff to assist homebuyers in minimizing the risk of damage from annually occurring natural phenomena as well as natural disaster.
Pick one of the following topics on which to concentrate your group's expertise:
b. soil structure: looking potential land slide and earthquake liquefaction sites.
c. transportation: energy use, cost (environmental, health, mechanical and fuel) and time
d. microclimate
e. water - quality of drinking water source; hydrology
f. earthquake faults; oil and methane deposits
g. fire risk
Procedure:
After forming your team (it would be best to have team members be from DIFFERENT geographical areas). Make sure your investigations include at least _____ of the _____ listed study sites.
Background information:
2. What kinds of questions arise from reading the background material?
Experimental design:
4. What is/are the hypothesis/hypotheses that may tentatively answer this question?
5. What are your variables? What is your control (is it possible for you to have one)? If not, how will you interpret results ? For example, with ozone question in number 3 above, there is no way you can have a control, because there is not a corridor of "pure" air from downtown L.A. to Santa Beach. However, you may be able to relate it to historical data taken from another study.
6. Are there confounding variables? What did you do to minimize error from these variables?
7. How are going to collect data? What data is going to be collected? How is it going to be recorded? Who is going to keep the data (the answer to the last question is - MAKE SURE THAT EVERYONE HAS A COPY OF ALL THE DATA!
Data analysis:
9. What trends and patterns do you see (this is DESCRIPTION of data)?
10. What are your findings (this is INTERPRETATION of data)?
11. What are your sources of error? What would you do differently if you were doing this study over again? What would you do to extend this study if you had more time?
Presentation of results:
Be prepared to give a ____ minute presentation, illustrating your background knowledge, data trends and interpretation trends. The presentation should be have some visual images to see as well as handouts. Treat your colleagues from other groups as prospective clients.
Introduction:
a. air quality: annual cycles of various pollutants as well as health effects of these pollutants.
1. What kind of background information do you need (be focused, don't just gather as much as you can without direction) and where can you find it?
3. Which of the questions in number 2 above can be answered through scientific inquiry? For example, one may want to ask, "How ozone levels vary along a Wilshire Blvd. transect stretching from downtown LA to the beach at Santa Monica?".
8. How can you represent your data is a way that is 1) easy to compare and analyze and 2) understandable by others that did not do the investigative work that you group did , i.e. the clients. Are there alternatives methods for representing data besides the one you chose?