Importance of Diversity in Seagrass Beds

For this draft I used Canva to create a rough verison of what I want my first infographic to include.  The first infographic will be targeting a general audience. The images I used were either personal pictures or taken from the IAN website, but I still need to add the attributions for them and an additional source list at the bottom. I’m also trying to consider ways I can make the infographic more visually appealing, maybe by adding additional pictures for the 3 levels of diversity.

Click here to see the draft of Infographic1!

One thing I found while working on the infographic draft was that I wasn’t able to fit as much information as I thought I would be able to. After realizing this, I updated the outline for my second infographic that is focused more on my research in H. wrightii beds in Florida.  I talked to a new professor at Florida International University who is going to be working on seagrasses in Indian River Lagoon and a marine consultant for the lagoon and offered to share my infographics with them.

 

Updated outline for Infographic 2:

1. Recent seagrass die-offs in Florida
   1. Algal bloom in Indian River Lagoon (2016)
   2. High salinity in Florida Bay (2015)
2. Common restoration techniques don’t often consider genetic diversity in their projects due to time and money constraints
   1. Genetic diversity research can provide this information to help these projects be more effective
      1. Even over a short time period of 1-2 years, genetic diversity can increase restoration success measures such as shoot density (Williams 2001)
   2. Graphic of how genetic diversity data for Florida was obtained
      1. The samples were collected prior to the diebacks so the data can help set a baseline of natural diversity in the beds
      2. Sampling scheme consisted of two 5-m by 5-m blocks, with a sample taken at each meter (shown in a visual). This was performed at 9 sites in Florida
   3. Overlay map
      1. The size of circles on the map at the 9 sites will vary in accordance with the diversity found at the site
      2. *This map will be similar (but much smaller) to the one at this link (hw-florida-sites2) but will have the variation in symbol size representing the diversity, and won’t have the site initials