When analyzing this research we looked over fourteen tubes. Three of the tubes have sterile soil and tress, three have sterile soil and no trees, three have non sterile soil and tress and three have non sterile soil and no trees and the other two tubes have vermiculite. Having these different tubes tell us if it’s the trees giving off the carbon or the bacteria or fungi. To get the sterile soil we autoclaved the soil and we rinsed the trees in 70% ethanol before we put them in the soil and the tubes.
To analyze the carbon we took the Li-CO 6400 and connect it to the tubes. This processes the gas through an infrared gas chamber so it can tell us how much carbon the tubes have. This process also told us what tube gave off more carbon. Once we finished this process we put the information we collected into graphs. By looking over the graphs it gives us an idea if the trees are giving off more or the organisms in the soil. Using the same machine we look at the photosynthesis of the plants. This is also helping us to look over the GPP of the plants.
The third step is, growing Bactria and fungi. We took 50g soil from each tube and put it into 4.50ml of water. We sifted through the soil before we added it to the water to make sure we had only soil. Once we combined the soil and the water we have to vortex it for four minutes. After that was done we took 1ml of that water and put it into test tubes of 9ml of water with pipettes. We put the more consecrated soil water in the First tube marked 10 -2. For there we only take water from the smaller test tubes and vortex them for a minute. After the tubes were done we took water from 10-6, 10-7 and 10-8 and put that on the ager. Once the water is on the plates we take freshly sterilized hockey sticks and create the lawn for our plates. Creating the lawn is moving the water around on the plate because you don’t want it in one lump. The reason we did this is so that the molecules is at a low number so we have the ability to count them. We had eighty four test tubes of the soil water and eighteen plates to each tube. We let are ager plates set for to five days so that the Bactria or fungi have a good incubation time. The reason we are growing our own bacteria and fungi is so that we know what is in the soil and to make sure our sterile soil is as close to sterile as possible.