CONCLUSIONS

a) In the first chamber of out ecocolumn we had the snail. Our first snail only lasted a few weeks before it died, but we got a new one and it is still going strong! I think that by the time we got our second snail the ecocolumn had naturally adjusted a little bit instead of everything being completely new and this may be a factor contributing to the second snail's survival. Next, we had worms. Since the day we put the worms into the ecocolumn we haven't really seen them, but they are they to decompose some of the plants in the decomposition chamber. The worms and snails were the only animals that we put into our ecocolumn, however, there were some bugs that got in there and stayed mostly in the aquatic and terrestrial chambers.
b) The abiotic factors in our ecolumn include the water, plants we had picked from outside, soil, and rocks. Throughout the year our rocks and soil did not change much other than just being a little bit weather over time. The water and plants, however, did. The water got progressively dirtier because of the plants and the snail living in it and polluting it. The plants were decomposed by the worms and continued to just get less and less abundant.
c) All three chambers within the ecocolumn interacted with eachother. The terrestrial chamber was where we planted the grass and when we watered the grass from the top of the ecolcolumn the soil in the terrestrial chamber would soak up the water, and the leftover water traveled through the decomposition chamber and into the aquatic chamber. By that time it had been filtered by travelling through all the soil and plant life. Also, the aquatic chamber produced some water evaporation which caused condesation throughout the entire column.
d) Compared to Patrick's groups ecocolumn I think that ours did better. I am basing this comparison on the aquatic chamber and how their water is completely green and filled with algea whereas ours is a bit more clear. I think that the condition of the water is vital to the survivability of the ecocolumn because the aquatic chamber supports that snail life.
e) If we had to do this project over, we would have put the terrestrial chamber beneath the decomposition chamber so that the water would go straight from the soil in the terrestrial chamber into the aquatic chamber and be freshly filtered.
f) The most important thing that my group and I learned from this project was that all systems in nature somehow interact.
g) I believe that all of our data is accurate. One unexpected observation would be how long our second snail has lived! After our first snail died so quickly we were definitely not expecting Napoleon II to live so long. No, we did not make modifications along the way.