Concepts Explored: Trophic levels, food webs, biogeochemical cycles, human impact on biogeochemical cycles.

Experiment: In this set of procedures you will measure mushroom yield under various conditions. You will study how levels of concentration of nitrate, heavy metals, and pH affect mushroom yield in separate experiments. This activity will require about two hours.

Please log in to the TableTop Science website, follow the directions for Lab 8 Ecology, and submit the completed activity form in this assignment folder by the due date posted in the syllabus. Remember to take the required snapshots (screenshots) of your results.

Creating Graphs Using Excel

You are encouraged to use Excel to create the graphs required for the labs 4 and 8 assignments. The ability to create graphs is a useful skill to have!

All UMGC students have access to Excel. See this page for information: https://www.umgc.edu/help/help-article-base.html?knowledgeArticleId=kA00W000000sZpeSAE&articleType=FAQ_IT__kav

Resources:

There are many good Excel Tutorials online, especially on YouTube, that you can use if you need help creating graphs.

Here is one suggestion (may be slightly different depending on the version used – you can stop at minute 4:30 – equation for trend line not needed): How to make a scientific graph in Excel

Microsoft Office 365 Training site, click on Excel, and Charts: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/training?redirectSourcePath=%252foffice-training-center

A Few Tips:

Scatter plots or bar graphs work well for the data you need to plot in labs 4 and 8.

Before you start, think about how you want the graph to look. Make sure your graph provides enough information so that the reader can understand the data presented just by looking at the graph.

The independent variable should always be on the x-axis and the dependent variable should always be on the y-axis.

Label the x and y axis, include the units of measure.

Include a descriptive title for your graph.