Draft 1 Proposal

This topic submitted by Leigh, Arms, Jones on 2/14/03. Additions were last made on Saturday, March 1, 2003. Section: Blaisdell/Wolfe

Human Impact on the biodiversity of Four Mile Creek

Dear Megen, Les, and Diane,

Comments in black are from CW and in blue are from MB.
We have read your proposal and find it to be a very good draft that is not quite ready for approval. Thus we are asking you to make some revisions of your proposal and resubmit it to this Web site no later than midnight on Thursday February 20.

You have a clear hypothesis about the biodiversity of fish species and you propose a reasonable measure of diversity with the Shannon-Wiener Diversity Index. We ask you to pay particular attention to species such as darters that are intolerant of poor water quality. Thus you may wish to assess riffles as well as pools at each site.

You talk about "river management" but you donÕt really articulate if and how the creek is managed. It might be interesting to interview the people who control the dam at Acton Lake. Do they think about the downstream impact or only the level of the Lake? Could they adapt other practices to help the creek downstream? You donÕt seem to have any hypotheses or research questions associated with the interviews. What might you predict about their attitudes, knowledge, and beliefs about the creek downstream? It might be interesting to interview people fishing on the creek. When I think about Acton Lake I see a big settling pond for agricultural run off upstream. If it turns out that water that comes out of the dam is "healthier" perhaps that is because it has been adjusted by time in the pond itself. Could this be a case of one human intervention canceling out another? Where are the headwaters of 4mc? Is it "developed" from the start?

Your sources look reasonable but you do not really annotate them. This is a thing you should do when you resubmit. What uses will be made of various clusters of resources? You should also position your proposal in the context of larger questions. The notion of historical contextualization is also quite vague. Finally, if the project is to live up to its potential you need to think about a realistic time line. With a little work this has the potential to be an excellent proposal leading to an excellent project. Try to meet as a group and have another round of input from each member of the team. The concept is OK. You might consider what form your project will take. Who do you wish would be influenced by your work? Could this paper be used by the Three Valley Conservation Trust? Could it be used to change the behavior of OxfordÕs Public Works? You might think of a reason beyond our course for doing the work you propose to do. Best wishes.

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