INTRODUCTION

In our eco-column, we had three tiers. The first tier on the bottom included a layer of sand followed by a layer of rocks. We then planted a plant in the sand to keep oxygen in the water for our snail, and then added water almost to the top of the first tier. We placed our snail carefully in the tier and fed it with three pieces of fish food. The second tier was our decomposition tier. We had leaves and grasses and other plants we found by the pond and we added two worms. Our third tier we filled with grass and fine dirt. We added a layer of dirt after we sifted through it to get all the big chunks out and planted grass. The abiotic factors of our eco-column were the rocks, soil, leaves and twigs, and water. The biotic factors were the plant that we planted in the first tier, the grass in the third tier, the snail, and the worms. Also, there were some bugs by the end of the project that we were not responsible for putting into our eco-column. Through the creation of this three-tieredd ecocolumn, we are trying to discover whether or not we can successfully create a contained environment in which plants and animals can survive. We are also trying to learn about the interaction between different parts of an ecosystem by observing interaction within the three tiers. We did not use a hypothesis for this project because it is not an experiment exactly, there are no specific variables that we are testing so there is no way to make just one specific hypothesis. We think that by the end of the project our snail will still be alive, the plants will have grown tremendously, and the water may turn a little bit yellow or green because in our eco-column there are no water cleaning processes. Throughout the project we will be measuring the turbidity, temperature, pH, nitrates, and dissolved oxygen levels of the water in the first tier. These measurements are important because our snail is living in that tier and the qualities of the water are important factors in his life. The water can be influenced by many different things, such as sediment that may come off of the rocks or enter the first tier from one of the other tiers, the snail and it's discharges, the plant, and the water that we will have flowing through all of the tiers periodically.