Natural Environment & Ecosystems

Kim Seok Kyu, Kwek Jing Yi, Lin Hou-Chun, Liu Zimu, Vegi Manas

Academic Advisor: Dr. Florence Ng

Singapore is currently facing 100% light pollution (Robert, 2016). Excessive artificial light at night leads to light pollution which endangers biodiversity by distorting animals’ night habits like reproduction and migration (Hölker, Wolter, Perkin, & Tockner, 2010). Previous research done by G.Eisenbeis and Hanel (2009) covered how the type of light source and the spectrum of light would affect the insects’ behaviour towards artificial light sources but there is little research done on the effects of how light orientation will affect the insects’ behaviour.  The objective of our group is to replace RVRC lights to a more insect-friendly light. We will be investigating the objective by experimenting the combination of colour of light and orientation of light source that will have the least impact on insects. The aim of the project is to test the different light colours- white, blue and amber and the different orientation of light source upwards, downwards and downwards (cone shape). The prototype will trap the insects that are attracted to the light bulb and the number of insects trapped will be counted. Lesser number of insects trapped will indicate that the combination is less harmful. From our experiments, we have found that the light orientation of downwards (cone shape) and white colour light has the least number of insects trapped on the sticky tapes. Therefore, we can conclude that the combination of downwards (cone shape) and white light is the least harmful to the insects.

Keywords: Ecosystems, Insects, Light pollution

Aeron Sim Shih Win, Chan Wan Ting, Karnati Sai Abhishek, Liu Yanru, Ong Tiong Ho Sean

Academic Advisor: Mr. Lim Cheng Puay

Coastal cleanups are a highly effective way to remove marine debris and they play an important role in protecting our marine ecosystem. Meso-plastics (debris ranging from 5mm – 25mm) are of particular concern as they are readily ingested by marine life, travel and accumulate up the food chain, and eventually end up in humans. Furthermore, it breaks down into microplastic (<5mm ) with time which has more detrimental impacts. Hence, it is important that this group of marine debris is removed effectively. However, the act of removing meso-sized trash is an inconvenient and labour intensive process. It is also often not cleared by contractors nor collected by cleanup volunteers. Thus, our group aims to explore the use of tools for coastal cleanup participants and organizations to increase the effectiveness of removing meso-plastics which would otherwise be a labour intensive process. To test this out, we used a basket to pick meso-plastics during coastal cleanup sessions. Our prototype basket effectively helped us collect 800 pieces of meso-plastics within a fixed area and time frame of 20 minutes as compared to 150 pieces of meso-plastics collected by the traditional hand-picking method under the same conditions. The results show that our prototype works and the utilization of our tools greatly eases the process of removing marine debris. As a result, we hope to make our prototype part of the preparation package for all coastal cleanup organizations in Singapore to make the removal of meso-plastics more effective.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Marine life; Waste management; Coastal cleanup;