Several-year extensive weather research (three locations):
Edgewood College researchers have established three weather stations on the Edgewood campus (Location 1: in the Regina parking lot; Location 2: in the rain garden by the Campus School (Humidity station); Location 3: on the edge of the parking lot and a grassy area between the Edgedome and Sonderegger Science Center). Over the course of several years, data has been collected that reveals the simultaneous temperatures of these three locations. Each location is in the midst of a different and unique immediate environment. This environment was analyzed: the weather station represented the center of a circle, and a 13 meter rope was attached to this center. By rotating the rope around this center, a 13meter radius circle was created. For this experiment, this 13 meter radius circle represents the immediate environment for each station.
Analysis of immediate environment:
AREA:
Percentage of surrounding area that is paved:
1. Parking
lot
89%
2. Humidity
station
4.6%
3. Front of Rain
garden
42.4%
(between Edgedome and Sondereggor)
The environmental makeup of each of these locations was analyzed by attaching a 13meter rope to the thermometer (at the height of the thermometer). This rope then acted as the radius of a circle, and was meticulously guided around the focal point, encompassing the arbitrary 13m radius circle that each location is described by. Once the boundary of the circle was established (and marked with chalk), the 13meter rope was used as a measuring tool (as .5 meter increments were marked on the rope) to determine the two-dimensional properties of the paved surfaces and vegetation within the circle. These dimensions were then used to determine the overall percentage of surface area within a 13meter radius of the thermometer.
Collection of data:
Edgewood College's natural science department established three small weather
stations on its campus in 2001. These stations included, among other things,
sensitive thermometers that record temperature at steady intervals. These data
have then been downloaded from the thermometers into the natural science
department's computers consistently over the past three years, and the data can
then be analyzed and used as research material. The digitized data collection
formats the temperatures into spreadsheets that allow for segments of the data
to be analyzed from a line graph representation. Comparative analysis of the
three different locations' temperatures over the exact same time can then be
made, allowing for discrepancies to be observed.