Chasing Bats and Tracking Rats: Urban Ecology, Community Science, and How We Share Our Cities

Chasing Bats and Tracking Rats: Urban Ecology, Community Science, and How We Share Our Cities — page 3 — Have you ever wondered how far rats scurrying out of dumpsters might travel in the city Or how many bird species are in your local park What about the ways that plants can ﬁght climate change in urban areas From bats to bees and microplastics to trees this book will introduce you to urban ecologists who answer questions like these ones And because science requires teamwork all of the urban ecologists you’ll meet are people that I know and have worked with You’ll also learn about the wacky ways we do our science in urban environments environments like riding a science bike Cities are complicated and busy places ﬁlled with lots of different challenges to doing research As urban ecologists we have to come up with creative approaches to get our data and build cool tools to help answer our questions Some of my urban ecologist friends even get everyday people like you to help them collect their data We want to help you understand why nature is so important in our cities Humans get a lot of beneﬁts or ecosystem services from nature but we also have a responsibility to keep our environments healthy and protect the species living in them We also want you to explore your own local biodiversity so keep an eye out for urban ecology challenges at the end of each chapter Who knows while you’re out adventuring in your neighborhood you might even meet one of us or your own friendly neighborhood urban ecologist Urban Ecology Challenge Each scientist in this book has created a challenge just for you These challenges will get you thinking like an urban ecologist and will show you how to be a protector of your local biodiversity Before you start make sure you have a small notebook and pencil No explorer adventurer or scientist goes anywhere without their trusty field notebook Look but don’t touch and please don’t feed Throughout this book you’re going to hear stories from scientists who catch and handle wildlife for a living These scientists me included have had years of training and wear special equipment to keep them and the animals they handle safe When you go out to enjoy the species in your neighborhood please don’t try to touch any of the animals you meet And don’t share your food with them Although lots of animals beg for human treats this food can make them sick later 2

Chasing Bats and Tracking Rats: Urban Ecology, Community Science, and How We Share Our Cities — page 5 — Hypothesis Science is all about asking questions about the way the world works A hypothesis is a well thought out answer to a question we have asked but haven’t yet tested with an experiment or through observation To come up with hypotheses we often need to do research to get enough information to make a statement about what we think will happen Let’s say we want to know if plants grow larger when they have access to sunlight If we did some research we would ﬁnd out that plants use the sun’s energy to produce their food through photosynthesis Based on this we could hypothesize that if a plant is given no light it won’t grow Experiment Once we have asked a question and come up with a hypothesis we can design an experiment to test it To ﬁnd out if sunlight makes plants grow we could design an experiment with two plants on a windowsill We could cover one plant with a box so it gets no light and leave the other uncovered Since we are only interested in the effect of sunlight we would want to make sure that nothing else differs between our plants This means we’d have to use the same species of plant give them the same amount of water at the same time and keep them at the same temperature Observation While experiments are an important part of science most of the urban ecologists you’ll meet in this book are trying to make observations about nature in cities but many urban ecologists do experiments too Observation means watching the natural world to understand patterns and see what might change over time With observational science we don’t manipulate or change anything like we would with an experiment For example if we wanted to know the height of the average middle school student living in Fredericton New Brunswick in Canada we couldn’t answer this question by doing an experiment Instead we would need to go out and make some observations about Fredericton’s middle schoolers 4

JavaScript Required

Whoops! We're sorry but Epic doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Check your web browser's settings to make sure it's enabled.