Roadkill Project Draft

                For a project in science class we had to choose a subject that could causes roadkill numbers to increase or decrease.  I choose to do my project on herbivores, carnivores, scavengers, and omnivores. For the project we had to make a hypothesis predicting what would happen with the data we collected. For my hypothesis I predicted that the higher the number of herbivores the higher the number of roadkill for the other groups would be. In order to determent this hypothesis I had to look at the previous year’s data.  I choose to do this hypothesis because most herbivores are at the bottom of the food change this means that there are many reasons why the number of the other groups would increase.  One large reason for this hypothesis is that the higher number herbivores the more carnivores and scavengers as well as omnivores can live in the area.

                After I got all the information to analyze my hypothesis I put all the information in to a graph. When this was done I looked at the data that I had collected to see if my hypothesis was correct.  To my surprise the numbers were very hard to determent because no number repeated. But for almost all of the data my hypothesis was correct.

                With the information that I got the conclusion was not what I had expected. I thought that the data that I was going to get would show a very recognizable pattern.  Although there is a couple things that could have a key factor in why there was not a pattern. One main reason is that there was a different number every year of the overall roadkill data. This meant that I could not compare the numbers evenly making it hard to find a pattern that would prove my hypothesis right or wrong.

                There is one thing that I would predict for next year.  That if someone were do this project again that there will be a very large number of herbivore compared to the other groups.  I think this because from the data that I got there was at least double the number of herbivores compared. And over all the project showed that there is a high population of roadkill.  

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Roadkill Number 6 – Summery

In science class we have been doing a project on roadkill in which we had to choose subject such as moon phase, speed limit etc. and how it is related to the numbers of road kill and research it. After we had done this we had to create a graph showing what we had found out. I chose to study whether most roadkill is diurnal or nocturnal. I chose this because animals interest me and I thought I could learn more about nocturnal and diurnal animals this way. I predicted that there would be a lot more nocturnal roadkill because obviously they’re out and about at night. This is when most commuters are coming home from work and they might be tired and not see the animal. Also, it is harder to see an animal crossing the road in the dark.

        I wrote my hypothesis based on this and began my research. Doing this research consisted of looking at numbers of roadkill over the years and creating spreadsheet on the information I found. After we had finished we had to create a graph on the data we had found to illustrate the result.

        I thought there would be a lot of squirrels but never as much as there turned out to be, almost half of the roadkill was gray squirrels! After I finished my research and took a look at it I realized I had been wrong, more of the roadkill was diurnal, my hypothesis was wrong. Looking back I think this is because most animals are diurnal and the huge amounts of gray squirrels were diurnal, this added up to the end result of diurnal animals being the most amount of roadkill.

      Next year I predict round about the same results as this year, seeing as gray squirrels aren’t going down in their numbers! Next time I think I will take a better look at the numbers of what I am researching before I begin my hypothesis.

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Road kill Analysis

                Our class recorded road kill for the past two months and now every student is creating a project based on a variable we choose to follow. I’m a loser. I decided to see if the day of the week made a difference in the amount of road kill. My hypothesis was the there would be the most amount of road kill on Saturday. I chose this day because I figured that people are off work and have free time to drive around.

                After doing research on the variable for three different years I made some conclusions. I realized that on average for the three years the day with the largest amount of road kill was on the weekend but on Sunday not Saturday. I think this happened because there is more tourism on Sunday and even more people are off from work than on Saturday, also the people who record road kill are more likely to remember the road kill they see on Sunday the next day they’re at school then on Sunday.

                Even though my hypotheses about a certain day of the week was wrong my general idea of the weekend having an effect did seem true. Other variables that could effected my hypotheses could be different events happening in rye to bring more tourism, the time of the year because people come to the beach when its warm. I think my conclusions and hypotheses could be more accurate if I had more data from more years so I could look for patterns. If I had to do this project again I would predict the data to turn out similar with Sunday.

   The teacher had everybody in the class choose a reason why animals got kill in road kill, for example: some picked weather and how it effected road kill, some picked if they were nocturnal or diurnal and some people like my self picked the size of the animals and if large animals or small animals go killed more in road kill accidents. I thought smaller animals would get killed more because there smaller and harder to see. There a little faster and they could catch you off guard, and they aren’t as smart as full grown animals and wouldn’t think, and just run into the road, and all of a sudden (splat)!

Analysis Draft

I chose to study how much/what type of  roadkill there will be in a period of the same two weeks in 2005  and 2009. My hypothesis was that there would be more roadkill as the two weeks would go on because it will get warmer so animals will be done hibernating and birds will come back from the south. I think that there will be about the same amount of roadkill in 2005 than in 2009 because it is the exact same time in the year. This might not be correct because maybe there were rabies in an animals’ population or maybe the climate might not have been the same.

I was not very surprised with the results I got with this project. It turned out that almost every animal was killed the same amount of times. The only thing that was a little strange was that there were 3 chipmunks killed in 2005 and none in 2009. Another thing that was strange was that there were 6 grey squirrels killed in 2009 and 1 in 2005.

I expected all of the roadkill amounts would’ve been the same.  I think that the grey squirrel’s population has grown rapidly in the last few years. It might have found humans’ trash outside and it’s eating that instead of acorns and its normal food. I also think that the squirrel is taking the chipmunks’ food because there are more squirrels now than in 2005 and there were no chipmunks in my data, but there were many squirrels.

Next year, I think that there will be more chipmunks and less squirrels because the squirrels will not have enough food and some of them will die. I think that people will also start taking better care of our earth so the roadkill will all be even with every animal. People will start riding their bikes more so there won’t be as much roadkill. I would study the amount of roadkill for one month instead of two weeks so I can really look at the more overall results.

In my school (Rye Junior High) we do a road kill project. For my project I decided find from our information what year had the most road kill for 8 weeks. Also, when I was done with that I am going to figure out y this was like that. For example if there were a lot of road kill there was a increase of animal population, people moved here, they tore down some forests, or big tourist year. A couple reason that there is not a lot of road kill would be dieses, or low population.

During this project I discovered that in 2005 there was not a lot of road kill. This might be because our data was incorrect or that was a drop in population. But it was neither the reason there was not a lot because that was one of the hottest years on record so the animals stayed in one spot so that they could stay cool. And the road would be extremely hot from the sun. This might have affected this year’s road kill but it didn’t because it was too much time for this year to be effected by it.

                In 2002 and 2004 there was a lot of road kill (more than 70). This was probably because there was a raise in population so that there were more animals were crossing the street. Also the animals would need to find more recourses because of the increase in population causing them to need to cross the street more than usual. What do you think is the cause?

                I think that next year it is going to go down because the road kill has been going up the past couple years. Meaning that the population would go down so less animals were going near or on the street.    

    For my roadkill project I studied speed limit within New Castle and Rye. I predicted that in New Castle Wild Rose Lane would have the most roadkill. The reason why is because a lot of people go to Fort Stark, an old fort located off of Wild Rose Lane. The main reason is because a lot of drinking goes on in there so a lot of crazy driving takes place. In Rye, I thought that the street with the most roadkill would be Washington Road. The reason why is because the school is on that road. If people are late to school, their parents will probably go a little over the speed limit. It’s also a route to the beach so people in the summer want to rush to the beach.

Analysis

Hypothesis

            The subject I chose to study for the roadkill project was the low pressure. No one had pressure as a study for roadkill, so I wanted to try something new. My Hypothesis for how would low pressure affect roadkill was that on low pressure days would have more roadkill. There were a few factors that influenced this hypothesis. Low pressure days are usually cloudy and rainy, so visibility would be reduced, thus making animals more vulnerable to getting hit by cars. Other reasons why low pressure days would have more roadkill would be because maybe low pressure has effects on an animal’s bodily functions. There would also be an X-factor involved, because low pressure might have effects on animals and humans we still don’t understand.

Results

            I discovered that overall more roadkill is killed on low pressure days than on high pressure days. I had done multiple studies on low pressure, allowing me not only to get which pressure had the most roadkill, but also to see how many more days of low pressure there were than high pressure. There were 24 days of low pressure, and 23 days of high pressure between March 9^th and April 24^th. This helped to know if one of the factors for roadkill was the difference in days between high in low pressure. This wasn’t a factor, though.

            I also figured out that not only more roadkill happened on lower pressure days than on high pressure days, but also that the lower the pressure, the more roadkill. There were more high pressure days with roadkill, but lower pressure days had a larger amount of roadkill. On the lowest pressure day, April 23^rd, the pressure reached a staggering 28.79 MB. The amount of witnessed roadkill was seven, which was the largest number of roadkill for this year. To make a long story short, there were various parts to the variable that affected the amount of roadkill.

Discussion

            Roadkill is something that is very hard to keep track of. My experiment could truly be just a coincidence, since not every roadkill can be accounted for. Some people didn’t give enough information about the roadkill, so those accounts were crossed off.

            I never expected that the lowest pressure of the roadkill time would have the highest roadkill overall. I thought that pressures 29.99 MB and below would have more roadkill. There are plenty of factors that could have contributed to the number of roadkill of any given day. As I had explained in the end of my results paragraph, factors like how good the witnesses were was a major factor. Some of the roadkill people had witnessed could have been killed the day before. Accounts of roadkill that didn’t have enough information were crossed out, so my hypothesis could have just happened by chance.

Next Time

            I thought my project went well, but there would be a few minor changes I would make. I would try to focus not only on low pressure, but high pressure because it could also have some effects on roadkill. I would also want to focus on the weather as well. The reason I didn’t focus on weather was because it would have taken a lot longer to get the project done. Next time I’ll know how to collect all the data better. High and low pressures could have more or less effects on roadkill each year, so my prediction of low pressure having more roadkill is my prediction for 2010.

     This is a bar graph measuring the total roadkill for high and low pressure days. The reason I chose this one was because it compared the high pressure days to the low pressure days, and it also proves my hypothesis that low pressure days would have more roadkill was right. The bar graph is a great way to compare these two variables because it gives you an idea how much roadkill was killed in each kind of pressure.

What Day of the Week Has the Most Roadkill?

                For my roadkill project I chose to study the amounts of roadkill on certain days. I wanted to see which day of the week had the most roadkill, which day had the least amount of roadkill, and if there was really a difference between days. I first started by guessing what days would have the most roadkill and what days would have the least. I thought that the weekends wouldn’t have as much roadkill as the weekdays. I thought that the weekend wouldn’t have as much roadkill because people are usually home on the weekends and aren’t traveling as much. For weekdays I thought much differently. I thought that there would be much more roadkill on weekdays because there are more drivers on the road. There are a lot of people going to work and taking their kids to school, also there would be school buses during the week.

                I collected data and tallied up the amount of roadkill for each day of an eight week period. Saturday and Sunday had a total of eight animals. Monday through Friday had a total of forty animals. Saturday had four animals and Sunday did as well. Thursday had the most with seventeen animals killed. The weekdays had more killed each day compared to Saturday and Sunday. I think my hypothesis was correct because when I tested it, it was true. 

                The results were what I had first expected to come out of the data. I thought that the weekdays definetly would have more roadkill than weekends. Everything I predicted was what happened, except for Thursday having seventeen animals killed. I think this threw off my data a little because I thought that the days would be almost equal with the amounts of roadkill. Monday had eight animals, Tuesday had five animals, Wednesday there were six animals, Thursday had seventeen animals, and Friday had four animals. I predicted that there would be about six to eight animals each day.  I think the weather might have affected the amounts of roadkill because we started in early March and that is when there was still snow on the ground and most animals were still in hibernation. I also think this was a factor because less people would be driving most likely due to road conditions. I noticed that by the time it was Easter, which was April twelfth this year, there was more and more roadkill being found.

                Next time I would predict the same thing to happen if I were doing this project at the same time of the year. If I were to study the amounts of roadkill throughout the winter in an eight week period I would expect the roadkill amounts to be significantly lower. If I were to study it in the summer for the same amount of time, I would expect the numbers of roadkill to be higher than when I did the project this time. I think the amounts of roadkill would be so much higher in the summer because the more people are traveling and there wouldn’t be snowstorms. Also all of the animals would be out of hibernation by then. The project I am working on right now is only on Rye and New Castle, New Hampshire. If I were to collect data from all of New Hampshire the numbers would be much higher because we only collected data from a couple roads. In New Hampshire there are  lots of roads, so there would be much more roadkill recorded.

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I compared Roadkill sizes over three years, 07, 08, and 06. I think that people need to be more careful when they drive, like not talking on the phone, or texting, or even having music to loud. If people started paying attention more, there would be a definite decrease in roadkill. Small animals had the greatest amount. There were 88 of them. I think that is because people can’t see them as well and don’t try as hard to miss them. Big animals, on the other hand, are easier to see. You really try to stop for them. They had 30 animals of roadkill. The Unknown animals had 10, which brings the total amount of roadkill to 128. I expected smaller animals to have more, because they’re small. You can’t see them, like I said above, as well as bigger animals. They are kind of invisible to the driver a little bit. Next time I think I will do a longer time, and have the topic be animals with shells and animals that don’t. That would be cool.

Hypothesis

I choose to study the category of scavenger or not. This project is just recording road kill for the past eight years and seeing if there would be more scavengers than other animals or the other way around. Other people in the past have thought that there would be less scavenger road kill but I guessed differently. My guess would be that there would be more scavenger road kill than the other. I guessed this because overall there are more scavengers in NH than prey or other animals. I know this because of previous data in NH during the road kill project. Records show that for all the past years there have been more scavenger road kill than any other. My hypothesis is that there is more scavenger road kill than any other kind of road kill.

Result

I choose to study the category of scavenger or not. I had to record how much scavenger road kill there was this year and graph the past eight years. I found out that there were more dead scavengers than any other animal. Scavengers played a big part in this project. An example is that if there was a dead bird in the road than perhaps there would be a raccoon that would start eating the dead bird (scavenging) then a car could come and flatten the raccoon creating more road kill. This cycle repeats itself over and over again just increasing the amount of road kill and decreasing the population of animals.

Discussion

From my hypothesis I thought that there would be more scavenger road kill than any other type, Although my hypothesis could have been wrong depending on some major variables. One major variable was Weather. If it was raining there may not have been a lot of road kill. (April showers bring May flowers.)Another major factor that could have changed the entire way people looked at was Visibility. This was a variable that changed a lot of things, if there was mist then people may not have been able to see the road and therefore there may have been more road kill than I anticipated.

Next Time

Well I predict that next year there will be less road kill if this keeps up to date with the breeding. The animals are killed as fast as they are born. At this rate most road kill animals are going to be extinct within a hundred years. If, in the next couple of years, scientists, hopefully, will invent a new vehicle that may have skinnier wheels or not make as much roadkill.

I said that Friday would have more kills than any other day because the roads have more cars on it because everyone is going somewhere fun.   But I was not that far off, it was Thursday. And it had about 18 all together in March and April.   But now I’m thinking Thursday because everyone wants to get where they are going  early so they go one  day before.     

That people wanted to get where they're going faster and don’t want  to side in a really long line of cars and waste  all their  gas and get hot and sweaty.  Then they may get mad and have a bad day or be late for a plan for something important. 

It was not what I expected and I thought It would be Friday because Friday is a very nice and bad day to go because it has more traffic   and it is  the weekend.

Next year would have even more kills on Thursday than this year and it will be small animals because you would not see them as easily because they're  small.