Urban Barcode Research Project Team Barcoding Newtown Creek
Program:
Urban Barcode Research Project
Year:
2017-18
Research Topic:
Biodiversity & trade
Taxonomic Group Studied:
Plants

Project:

Barcoding the Biodiversity of Newtown Creek
Students:
Katya Naphtali, Bonnie Chen
Institution:
St. Francis College, Brooklyn
Mentors:
Alison Dell

Abstract:

Newtown Creek, which runs the border between Brooklyn and Queens, NY is an EPA superfund site and one of the most polluted bodies of water in the country. Two envirnomental NGOs, Hudsonia and the Newtown Creek Alliance (NCA) have just begun to document the biodiversity of plant species along the waterfront through a citizen science project using a smartphone app called iNaturalist. This proposal will use DNA barcoding to both identify species along the creek and verify the accuracy of the iNaturalist app. We will correlate species diversity in polluted areas as well as search for present invasive species. To identify which plants thrive along the creek, we will use our barcoding data from DNA subway. To verify the accuracy of the iNaturalist app we will estimate the percentage of correctly identified or misidentified plants by comparing the DNA barcoding data with the iNaturalist. Finally we aim to correlate plant biodiversity with ambient air and water pollution levels. We predict tha

Poster:

DNA Barcoding Poster
View team poster (PDF/PowerPoint)

Team samples: