Introduction

What impact will the feces have on Vilas Park with people present?  With a lot of feces present in Vilas Park I think that people will step in it and little kids might play with it.  With the feces present a lot of people will probably go to the Vilas Zoo instead of going to the park.  People could consider going to other parks because there is so much feces present in Vilas Park.  When I took the pictures I saw a lot of geese present and that the amount of feces being produced is massive.  During the more mild temperatures it seems there were more geese present.  During the mild temperatures more people were in Vilas Park feeding the geese.  It appears that the geese are staying in zone 6 more than zone 1.  So it seems the geese population in Vilas Park is increasing every year.  With more geese present the vegetation will likely be eaten by the geese

Discussion

          The first part of doing the project was to plan what you do over the course of 6 weeks.  The big part of this was how to plot the data out over time.  But I still need to figure out how to plot it and label it right.  I hoped to learn if there was a different or current trend going on between this year and previous years. My main goal was to find out how this year’s data is similar to or different from previous years.  So I found that the population of geese present in zones 1 and 6 has decreased.  Also I found that the population in zone 6 was greater than zone 1.  From what I can tell it looks like the feces in zone 6 was fresher because it had more moisture in it.  I think the decreasing number of geese will affect people using the park and therefore more people will start to use the park again and I predict people will use it more often now.

Methods

·        Our class collected samples of the feces from Vilas Park from Zone 1 & Zone 6.

·        To weigh the samples, I weighed the pan first

·        I weighed the samples in the pan when wet

·        I then dried the samples in the oven for 1 week

·        I weighed the dry feces

·        Next I graphed the results and compared them with the previous years

·        I took pictures of Vilas Park with geese present in Zone 1 & Zone 6

·        I compared my data with previous years data

·        I then looked at the population of geese in Vilas Park in Zones 1 and 6 throughout years 2001-2008

Go to Results    Methods

Results

·        I found that the dry weight in zone 6 was 2.70 grams and zone 1was 1.69 grams

·        Zone 6 for the average wet weight was 8.80 grams and zone 1 was 6.58 grams.

·        I found that the average weight of everything in zone 6 was heavier

·        For 2008 the average percent of water in zone 1 was 74.3% and zone 6 was 69.3%

·        We don’t have results for zone 6 for 2000, 2001, and 2005

·        We don’t have results for 2004

·        From 2000-2002 the dry weight in zone 1 was increasing and then it had a dramatic drop in weight until 2007, then it increased in 2008

·        From 2003 on, the dry weight in zone 6 was falling and from 2006 to 2008 it was decreasing

Go to Discussion

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jim Lorman for his support and contribution to this project.