How Does Mowing Affect the Diversity of Plant Life?

Mateusz BorowieckiAthavan Balendran

Marcus KatzEesh Dadheech

HypothesisIf the ground is not maintained, then there will be

more and bigger species of plants because none of them will be killed my technology such as mowers and weed killers.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------So we believe that an area that is regularly

mowed will have fewer types of plant life than an area that is not regularly mowed, since mowing prevents the growth of large plants, and the agitation caused by mowing may adversely affect other plants.

Experiment DesignWe will use eight (8) identical hula hoops

(diameter: 72 centimeters) to mark out our test areas.

We will have four (4) samples for both mowed and un-mowed space.

Our test areas will both have more or less the same amount of sunlight and will be as close to each other as possible.

Since no-one in our group is a botanist, we will distinguish separate types of plants purely on how they look.

VariablesIndependent

Mowing/Location. Half of our experiments will be in a mowed area, and half will be in an un-mowed area.

Dependent Number of types of plants. We believe that mowing directly affects

how many different types of plants are present in an area.Constants

Sunlight. We will try to choose areas with similar levels of light. Size of area we search. For both mowed and un-mowed, we will

search the area covered by four identical hula hoops. Search method. For all eight test areas, we will search them using

the same method; that is, have our whole group search the hula hoop while another writes down what they find.

Climate and temperature. The areas are relatively the close and therefore these factors remain the same. {And temperature remained close to the same in the 45 minutes}

Experiment Diagram

Baseball Diamond Fence (separates mowed and unmowed areas.)

Mowed Area

Unmowed Area

HulaHoop

(Mowed)

Hula Hoop (Unmowed

)

Results!

Mowed Area Unmowed Area0123456789

Hula Hoop 1Hula Hoop 2Hula Hoop 3Hula Hoop 4

Hula Hoop 1

Hula Hoop 2

Hula Hoop 3

Hula Hoop 4

Mowed Area 4 Plant Types

5 Plant Types

4 Plant Types

4 Plant Types

Unmowed Area

7 Plant Types

8 Plant Types

8 Plant Types

7 Plant Types

Area/ No. of Hula Hoop

Num

ber

of P

lant

Typ

es

Pres

ent

ConclusionBased on the test results, our group believes that mowing does

indeed adversely affect the diversity of plant life in an area.Looking at the data, we can see that, on average, the un-

mowed areas have 3 or 4 more types of plants than mowed areas.

We believe that our findings are much like the actual population. Just looking at an un-mowed field, one can see much more plant life than on the average front lawn that has been regularly mowed.

If we were to repeat this experiment, the one thing we would definitely change would be having more testing areas. We only had a total of eight this time, and we believe that if we had had more test areas, we would have achieved much greater accuracy.

Maintained Lawn Area 1

Maintained Lawn Area 2

Maintained Lawn Area 3

Maintained Lawn Area 4

Unmaintained Lawn Area 1

Unmaintained Lawn Area 2

Unmaintained Lawn Area 3

Unmaintained Lawn Area 4