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Week 9

I presented on Friday and I'll continue to improve upon it for the final presentation in May. My essay is on its way to completion. Here's an edited segment: Biodiversity is extremely important and can remain preserved if we save as many endangered species as possible. According to GreenFacts (2005), “biodiversity is the variability among living organisms from all sources, including terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems.” Biodiversity is important because it is “essential in supporting human existence, for health, well-being and the provision of livelihoods” (Christie 2012). Each species in the environment is important to contributing biodiversity, which is one reason why we are trying to save and repopulate endangered species. The Gila cypha is an endangered species of fish. It resides in six places on the planet; one being in different
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Week 8

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Some in my audience have requested pictures of the humpback chub. Here he is along with a fun fact; they're nearly blind because they live in such murky water and they never developed the need to see as clearly as we do. A neat song to listen to is The Humpback Chub song: https://youtu.be/ihvhO_2lCyU here's the link if you'd like to listen. On another note, I'm presenting to the CollegeBoard on Friday this week. I'll let you all know how that goes.
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Week 7

Since my project is an AP Research Project, this will be one of the last times I will post on this blog. My presentation is almost completed and I will be recorded presenting it on April 13th. My final research paper is due on April 24th. I will present again on May 6th at 10am, and this presentation will be open to everyone. (I believe this will be announced sometime soon in school and I'll post on my social media where it will be.) If you'd like to see my results and a more in-depth understanding of pH and the humpback chub, I'll see you on May 6th. Thank you to all who followed my blog on its journey of research. Much love and gratitude, Marggie
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Week 6

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Sorry for the late update, I was out of the country and didn't have any internet. I've begun analyzing and graphing both the pH and the population data. If you look at the data with respect to change and you compare data that way, there is a clear correlation. However, something odd happens when I graph them together against each other. The data just becomes clumps. I will ask my Statistics teacher what this could mean. Here's a sneak peak of the data I'll be presenting.
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Week 5

Ah, I've finally completed averaging and inputting my pH data in a spreadsheet. Next up, population data. However, I've discovered a problem. No one had population estimates of the humpback chub until approximately 1989. Some attribute it to the fact that they're an odd sort of minnow that is undesirable for food purposes and ugly looking. Others say that it's because at one point, there was such an abundance of them that they never would have even been threatened. However, when rainbow trout (the humpback chub's main predator) was introduced in 1960, numbers dropped rapidly. The issue with that is that's around the same time the Glen Canyon Dam was completed. This means that I might have more confounding variables than anticipated. I'll keep you updated. -Marggie
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Week 4

Thanks to USGS (most notably Meredith Hartwell who sent me the documents needed and David Ward who referred me to a couple studies not in the USGS library) for the immense amount of data to analyze. I've been typing away with averages of pH's and population estimates since some of the data is from 1945 - that's 11 years before construction on the dam even began. I'm ecstatic about this because now I have a set control data. However, for the foreseeable future, I'll be continuing to analyze this vast amount of data. -Marggie
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Weeks 2 and 3

Recently, a debate has come up about whether the different variants of chubs actually qualify as different species. I've been keeping up with this debate which will be resolved by the EPA sometime in March. I will keep my readers updated on what I find. If you would like to see the exact article, the link is: http://knau.org/post/three-colorado-river-chubs-may-no-longer-qualify-protection-separate-species My city's newspaper also published an article on the chub and so I've done some more delving into the different methods that have been proposed to save the Gila cypha.  Translocation seems to be a decent option because the water temperature and maybe even the pH is more optimal near the confluence than where they were before in the canyon. This link has more details: http://azdailysun.com/news/local/endangered-chub-conservation-sees-success-in-grand-canyon/article_7072b5db-562e-50c7-a2bb-44b1b7252d90.html I've begun to communicate with USGS about obtaining copies o
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