Okay, I've temporarily moved away from the facial recognition idea and am back to global warming. (I apologise to the people reading this blog- it must be really hard to follow.) As shown in the mind map in my second post, one of the aspects of global warming that I thought about studying was the effect global warming and rising sea temperatures will have on coral reefs.

To conduct the experiment I would obtain a sample of a species of coral and place it in a fish tank. Over the fish tank I'd put one of those heat-lamps, maybe similar to those used for pet reptiles. The temperature of the water and lamp would begin at the temperature the coral is used to, then after a certain amount of time (say, 2 days) I'd increase the temperature. The increase would depend on the rate scientists believe that global warming will warm our seas. Every 2 days I'd increase the temperature by the same amount and observe how the coral reacts. Obviously I'd have to do a lot more research into how coral survives so that I could place the right type of water and other things in the fish tank with it to ensure that the coral doesn't die because I've left out a vital nutrient as opposed to because of the temperature increase. If time and availability permit, I would hopefully be able to study at least 2 or 3 corals instead of just 1, removing some of the variables of the experiment.

I think the aim would be something like "Do increases in sea temperature have an effect on coral reefs?" The independant variable would be the increase in temperature while the effect on the coral would be the dependant variable.

There has been quite a lot of research into the changes in coral reefs due to rising temperatures. According to my research, the coral dies due to a process called 'bleaching'. The rise in sea temperature causes coral to release the food producing algae that is its symbiont (I think that's a word, it is according to dictionary.com anyway). Without the algae the reefs turn white as they die. Coral can recover from bleaching, but most do not. Fish species also suffer from the bleaching of coral but I don't think test that in a fish tank for my SRP. For anyone wanting a bit more knowledge of this but not an overwhelming tidal wave of words try http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/warming-coral.html .

This picture is also from that siteand shows what was once a living reef but now resembles rubble.