10+Forest+(Highland)

=== In the forest ecosystem, there were a lot of trees and twigs. Some of the twigs were curled. The trees had long thick trunks. The leaves on top of the trees were bright, big, and green. There were abiotic factors of the ecosystem scattered on the forest floor. Some dead leaves on the forest floor with long stems, and a lot of decaying material. The leaves were also hard, brown, and crinkly. They were around the length of a middle finger, with brown small spots. The biotic (living) leaves are a different story. They were a nice mint green, in all different length. Some were thin and some were big. The temperature was pretty humid and very shady. The soil was moist. When you stepped down there would be a little imprint of your shoe. I then looked down and saw a spider crawling around on the soil. I also, dug in the dark brown soil and found a worm. The worm was long, curled up, and a few inches into the ground. On the ground there was also a patch of green grassy fields. There were a lot of leaves, twigs and weeds on the ground. There were a few strands here and there.===

=== For our graph, we decided to make one displaying the depth of dead plant material on the forest floor. We measured it in centimeters. We thought this would be the most interesting to display because there is so much on the forest floor. There are dead leaves, grass, weeds, twigs, stones, bugs, soil, and much more. There were many different layers of these materials also. We got very different results, which is why we chose to display them on our graph. ===

=== Our ecosystem was the forest. The soil provides water for the plants, because it absorbs plenty of water. In our soil test, the forest’s soil drained the water in 12 seconds. There are a ton of tall trees and shrubs. We think there are so many plants because the soil is moist and contains lots of good nutrients to help the plant grow. The trees provide shade for the mushrooms and other decomposers to grow. We saw a wide variety of biotic factors in the forest. We found worms, spiders, gnats, and even an armadillidiidae (or a roly poly). This is an example of biodiversity because there are many different kinds of bugs. We saw the same shrubs growing in different places in the forest ecosystem, which would be an example of monoculture. It is monoculture because there is only one type of plant. We noticed a particularly large amount of weeds on the ground. This is probably the case because the soil offers a lot of nutrients to help a plant grow. The trees also provided a lot of shade; a great amount to help a plant grow. It wasn’t too hot, or too cold, which is why we think there are so many plants. We saw lots of dead plant material on the ground, decaying, which helps fertilize the soil. When a plant dies, it becomes decomposed, and gives back to the environment by acting as a fertilizer. This is an example of a succession because it is a predictable change (fertilizing the soil) right after a disturbance (the plant dying). === = =  **The Forest,**

Few noises in the wall of trees, and almost as if everything is moving in slow motion.






=== We picked this picture because we thought that it was //very// cool. We haven’t seen curly twigs before and we wanted everyone to know what they are like. We found several of these unique twigs wrapped around a nearby branch. It was hard to get them off the branch because they were so twisted, but because they were already dead it wasn’t as hard as it could have been. There were other twigs much like this one. There was a branch in a ball that was all twisted up. These curly twigs were amazing!===