Possible Research Studies
Impact of Stream Restoration on Habitat Quality
(there
are numerous indices of quality that you could look at)
Impact of Eucalyptus trees (or another introduced species
such as Broom) on
Soil
characteristics – including nitrification etc
Soil
invertebrates
Germination
of seeds
Etc
Effects of standardized testing on environmental education
Consumption of high mercury level fish by low socioeconomic
groups or other social justice projects
Consumer awareness topics – numerous possibilities
Urban Bee Garden – measuring impacts (Hannah or Gabe
get first dibs)
Toxicity tests – many possibilities
Comparison of health of EBRPD ponds with EBMUD ponds
(compare management)
Comparison of high till vs low till gardening, or mulch vs
no mulch etc
Compare
growth rates, pests, yields, natural predators, etc
Post-fire succession in Oakland hills
Effectiveness of ladybugs as Biological Control agents
Effect of removing all standby-mode appliances (vampires) on
home energy use.
You donŐt necessarily need to collect your own data –
there are huge databases available to the public online that you might pick and
choose from so that you can test a specific hypothesis. Here are some examples
of whatŐs out there-
http://www.fao.org/waicent/portal/statistics_en.asp
(you
could find the data here to test, for example, the hypothesis that poor
countries put a smaller fraction of their total land into the protection of
biodiversity).
(there
are a variety of different types of databases here. You could perhaps use the
data to test hypotheses related to the impact of warfare/armed conflicts on
biodiversity etc.)