Observation #1

Cinco De Mayo!
Site: The Cottenwood Park Pond
Time: 4:17 PM
Temperature: 76 Degrees F
Weather: Sunny and then party cloudy. Very small breeze
Soil: Bone Dry

My observation area is a small man made pond in my Cottenwood neighborhood. Right now, the pond is dry and has no water in it at all, but I am hoping that at the end of May or so, the pond will fill up and give me a more biodiverse area to work with. The bottom of the pond is full of rocks, which are abiotic factors. There are aspen trees, pine trees, and willow trees nsurrounding the area. On the aspen trees there are small buds. What are they and what do they do? There are lots of biotic factors besides the trees. There is some dried grass along with some living green grasses. In the bottom of the pond there is dried dead looking moss. Some abiotic factors are the rocks, the dry soil, and there was tons of pollution. I found wrapers, plastic bags, and clothing in the area around my pond, and that was not all of the human impact. There were trimmed williow trees on the edges of the pond that had been cut to their roots. I decided to try and trace to where the water should flow from, because there was no water in my pond and i wanted water in it. I traced the dry stream up hill and after 112 strides, we found some distilled water. It was not flowing. It was also full of mud. On the top of the water there were bugs, water striders! Further upstream, the water was flowing very quickly. I looked around and i found a large green thing covering the outlet to my pond! I tried to move it, but it was stuck very firmily. So I will try again later on in the week.