Plant Investigations

Plants are indicators of the quality of the local environment that impacts all living creatures in the area. We just need to know how to examine plants to be able to read their signs of an unhealthy environment and be able to identify the causes of the problems.

The following investigations are designed to show the basic plant processes, the many ways plants respond to their environment, and how we can monitor plant health using growth characteristics and proportions of different wavelengths of light reflecting from their leaves.

Plants and Scale

• Adopt a Leaf
• Adopt a Branch
• Adopt a Landscape with PicturePosts
• Adopt a Landsat Pixel with Forest Watch

Plants and Time

• What's Been in Your Backyard over the Past Centuries?
• Where Did the Old Growth Forests Go?

Incorporate MVH tools, software, and investigations wiith NASA's Investigatiing Plants from Space (pdf file of student and teacher guide for grades 5-12).

In particular, create time lapse movies of experriments, use MVHimage to analyze growth rates and colors of stems and leaves, and grow plants in different lighting conditions using LEDs and/or colored filters (see sources of equipment).

Additional investigations are in development, please check back later.

Challenges

Plant Challenge – Do Plants Grow at Night?
Plant Challenge – What is the Area of This Leaf?
Plant Challenge – How Long are these Pine Needles?
Plant Challenge – How Tall is the Tree?
Plant Challenge – What is the Tree's Diameter?
Plant Challenge – How Dense is the Tree Canopy?

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