During our winter break, the AP Environmental Science classes were assigned to build a biobottle project with plants, organisms, and other things to recreate a real-life ecosystem. Mrs. Lozada assigned it, while explaining that the idea was to connect all of the bottles (tubes, string, etc) to display how these organisms would function in their everyday ecosystems! We were requested to make a reflection on how we felt about the project, the process around it, and what we did to make it a success! My reflection is shown below:
For this project I made 3 different types of bottles. We had freshwater that went into each ecosystem bottle. Through the water, we had a string go through it to make sure the water would travel through each ecosystem that we had. At the bottom of bottle 1, I had beads there to symbolize rocks to help the water filter through the soil to make the plant grow bigger and it did. This filtration process played a critical role in supporting the growth of the plant within that ecosystem. As a result, the plant grew significantly larger, demonstrating how the structure of the ecosystem and the presence of natural filters contribute to healthy plant development.
Throughout this process, I had two different ecosystems with the same plant (succulent). So I had more of a wet swamp ecosystem in bottle 1, while bottle 2 was more of a dry/dirt biome. In both bottles, I had a succulent plant that grew better in bottle 1 because of the moisture in the air and because of the beads mimicking the rocks. As a result, the soil was drier and the succulent didn’t grow as well compared to the first bottle. This experiment demonstrated the importance of water availability and filtration systems in supporting plant growth. The differences in the ecosystems provided a clear contrast in how environmental conditions impact the same plant species.
