Statistics, Rivers, and Bugs! Oh My!

Summary

“Keep Austin Weird” is a popular slogan referring to the uniqueness of the town itself. Austin has always managed to march to its own drum and is still referred to as the “Live Music Capitol of the World.” However, as the city has continued to be such an attractive place to live for all varieties of people, it has slowly become overwhelmed with the ever increasing population.  One of the things that this population brings with it is pollution. On a given day, one can glance out at Town Lake which is right in the heart of Austin and see people rowing, jogging, or even playing water polo in kayaks.  The problem is that the water of Austin is slowly becoming more polluted.  Our project intends to address this problem by having the students search for insects that are easily affected by pollution in the various rivers and streams surrounding Austin and having them explain what is affecting the ecosystems of these insects. They will back up their data with statistics and present it to local organizations created for the protection of the cleanliness of this magnificent city.

Description

This is a six week long project geared towards raising student’s awareness of the environment around them and the effects of human population on even the smallest environmental niche, insects. The students will be using the EPT biomonitoring test in order to discover which of three rivers is the most pristine. The river ecosystems they will be monitoring are Waller Creek, which runs through the University of Texas campus, the San Marcos River, which is surrounded by highways and “floated” by relaxing Texans, and Bull Creek, which runs the entire length of the Green Belt. The EPT biomonitoring test is based on the presence or lack of three incredibly intolerant-to-pollution orders of insects the Ephemperopterans, Plecopterans, and Trichopterans.
This experience will include

• researching the man-made and natural surroundings of rivers in Austin. This will give the students an idea of possible pollution sources in the waters of Austin. This information will be used by the students when explaining their data results.
• delving into the insect world both analytically and literally. By first learning of the life stages, environments, and pollution sensitivities of the insect orders Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera, the students will be able to explore natural habitats around Austin in order to find these aquatic insects.
• learning the basics of statistics and reviewing knowledge gained in Algebra 1 and 2. The students will use their understanding of statistics in order to analyze their collections. Specie type, number collected, and location will be compared to expected numbers in order to make conclusions on the pristine-ness of Austin Rivers.

The students will work in groups to analyze the data and come to a well researched, well argumented conclusion. Student groups will present their collections, data, conclusions, and choice of community service at the end of the semester. After their final presentation the students will perform their choice community service to raise awareness of river quality in Austin.

Rationale

One thing still noticeably absent from the background of the Austin skyline that has become so prevalent in other major Texas cities such as Dallas and Houston, as well as national cities such as Los Angeles, is the lack of a haze cloud. The pollution that is so prevalent in those cities has not yet made its true effects felt on Austin, but if anything that means that Austin needs to take more measures to ensure that the air in the city stays relatively clean and pollution free.

While the air is still relatively clean, the water has been seeing the effects of pollution for some time now.  The water of Lake Travis, Lake Austin, and Town Lake has become increasingly murky, and action must be taken to prevent these great bodies of water from becoming places Austin families and residents can no longer enjoy. 

Organizations do exist which seek preserve the cleanliness of the Austin bodies of water such as Save Our Springs and the Austin Youth River Watch, but there is a large gap between the high school students of Austin and these organizations. One goal of this project is to help students realize just how serious the problem of pollution is and to help them see, as the future leaders of Austin and of our country, that they can do something about it. This project will provide them an opportunity to report their findings and to help figure out solutions for the sake of maintaining the cleanliness of the beautiful bodies of water in Austin.

Potential Impact

There are many goals of this project. Experimental design of the project itself is something that even experts struggle with, and to give students early exposure to doing experiments properly will only help them.  It can often be the most important factor in whether or not they can draw any proper conclusions from their data, and it is also the first part that comes under scrutiny from those who wish to challenge what the data says.

Students will also learn not only how to collect their data properly but also how to interpret it and how to ensure that they can, in fact, draw conclusions from it. The last goal of this project is to teach students how to get involved in their communities and how to become the changes that they want to see in it. Even if pollution isn’t their cause in the future, the students will have more experience in dealing with community leaders and with speaking in public, which they will have to do when giving their project presentations.

In future years of this project, it will be possible to compare the data gathered with the older data and to compare the pollution over the years to see whether or not improvements are being made.  Overall, the goals of this project are for students to have a better idea of how to get active in their community, how to set up experiments properly, how to draw conclusions from their data, and how to have confidence in themselves when talking about their findings in public.

Evaluation

For the Math portion of the evaluation, students will be learning from the beginning the tools that will be necessary for their projects. They will start with some of the basics such as calculating mean and median, and they will work their way up to more advanced tests such as the Z and T-Tests to determine the accuracy of their data. They will also be calculating theoretical versus actual values to help them with probability and in their understanding that experiments don’t always work just the way they are supposed to.  Their math grades will be based on tests asking them to apply what they have learned, as well as how well they analyzed their data. So even if a student has little success finding insects they can still do well simply by analyzing the data they do have correctly. They will also be responsible for a write up portion of the lab where they explain what could have been done better setting up the experiment and what future students could do differently. Basically, the important mathematical aspects of this project will not be the project itself, but everything that went into the project, and their understanding of how to fix the project if they were to do it a second time to get meaningful data and results.

For the Science portion of the evaluation, students will begin learning about the insect groups Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera. They will use this information to "hunt" for insects in the assigned rivers of Austin. They will bring these insects, properly bottled, back to class in order to correctly identify them. By using a dichotomous key, the species will be identified down to species (Genus species), properly bottled, and correctly labeled to the protocol of standard aquatic entomology practices. The presentation and identification of the insects will be a key factor in the final grade of this portion of the project. The importance of learning entomology practices can be carried in to higher scientific learning by reinforcing the necessity of correct scientific practice. Each scientific field has its own unique protocol that must be followed world-wide.

By keeping the students data and analysis, we will be able to make huge strides and rapid improvements in the project and advise students of potential pitfalls before they begin. We will also be able to track from year to year how the rivers and streams are being affected to see if there has been any improvement over time.