The face lift of a tree

Predictions: The bark peels due to the changing of weather, its surroundings (water, wind, shade, sun, other plants and amount of human contact).

Research design: Look through books in the library to look up why the trees peal in the first place. Then we plan on locating a few white paper birch trees in different locations. For instance, we want to find one near water, one with a lot of sun light, and one with lots of shade. From these different locations we hope to be able to measure the amount of bark that peels from each tree, to find the different rates. To do this we will observe the trees a few times a week, while taking photos each visit from the same spot each time to be able to compare the peeling more closly. This way the differences between each visit will be more noticable to us and to the class. After weeks of checking the tree and recording the weather of the day, including wind speeds, amount of rain, temperature, and amount of sun (based on the time of day, which will also be recorded), we plan to combine all of the data to see how much fell off each visit due to the conditions it was in.

Explanation: With our data in conection to library research as to why white paper birch trees peel in the first place, we hope to find the rate at which it peels both daily and seasonally, and also to understand why this particular tree out of so many in nature has this function.

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Here is a list of responses that have been posted to this Study...

• response 3 face lift (9/9/99) [ Contributor: jill dann-Section: Zinn ]
• A good idea (9/9/99) [ Contributor: Laura Dean-Section: Zinn ]
• Response to "Face Lift" Idea (9/8/99) [ Contributor: Katie Martinek, Matt Bryant, Kelsi Billingham-Section: Zinn ]
• response 2: Face Lift (9/8/99) [ Contributor: Shannon Fleming Ervin-Section: Zinn ]
• Sources? (9/7/99) [ Contributor: Hays Cummins-Section: Cummins ]

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