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:
- Recent seagrass die-offs in Florida
- Algal bloom in Indian River Lagoon (2016)
- High salinity in Florida Bay (2015)
- Common restoration techniques don’t often consider genetic diversity in their projects due to time and money constraints
- Genetic diversity research can provide this information to help these projects be more effective
- Even over a short time period of 1-2 years, genetic diversity can increase restoration success measures such as shoot density (Williams 2001)
- Graphic of how genetic diversity data for Florida was obtained
- The samples were collected prior to the diebacks so the data can help set a baseline of natural diversity in the beds
- 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
- Overlay map
- The size of circles on the map at the 9 sites will vary in accordance with the diversity found at the site
- *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
- Genetic diversity research can provide this information to help these projects be more effective