Research+Resources

=Start your Research here!= toc =Step 1: NoodleTools= Citation & Copyright Resources Posted on the Waltham District Libraries website, here you will find video tutorials for signing up and using NoodleTools, sample papers with citations, and helpful links and handouts for website evaluation. Watch the videos with your headphones!

=Step 2: Research= [|Biomes of the Earth] Facts on File Database on Biomes with excellent information, maps, pictures, videos and links (MLA Citations provided)

Great Websites! Posted on the Waltham District Libraries website, here you will find a plethora of resources under the **Environmental Science** and **Plants and Animals** headings. (Most sites include MLA Citations)

=Step 3: Citations= Here at Waltham High School we use the MLA Citation style to format our research projects and document our sources. Their are two components to citing sources:

Parenthetical Citations
Use the Parenthetical Citation Guide to help you document your sources. Parenthetical Citations need to be used within the paragraphs of your writing. They need to be linked to your Works Cited page and corrospond to the "name" of the citation. The following examples are from a different Biomes Project from 2009: In Example 1 below, (Allaby) and (Butler) are the authors names. These are the first words in the citations on their Works Cited page. In Example 2, (Mercury) is the title of the article. There were no authors listed, so the first word in the citation was the name of the Article.

Example 1: **Madagascar is an island is located on the southeastern part of africa. This small island also many different contrasting ecosystems including a coastal rainforest, lowland rainforest, mountain rainforest, wetlands, coral reefs, savannas, spiny rainforest, and a desert. Montane forests are different from lowland forests because their tempurature changed throughout the forests from the different elevations. While in a lowland forest the tempurature is constant ( Allaby ). The Madagascar rainforest is a vast land full of thousands of animals. Not only are there thousands of animals but most of them evolved in Madagascar and are only found there. For example the lemurs. They are monkey like creatures that evolved in Madagascar, and do not live anywhere except for Madagascar! Also, almost half of the bird species in Madagascar are endemic to the area. In this rainforest there is 200 cm of rainfall per year. The humidity is 100%. Also, the temperature is very hot ( Butler ).**

Example 2: **Mercury is released into the earth to be used in gold mining. All of the mercury that is released into the environment will eventually reach the soil. Once mercury reaches the soil, it becomes a state that is very easily absorbed by organisms. When it is absorbed by organisms it can cause severe nerve damage ( Mercury ). This may not effect the plants that have already bloomed because plants do not have nerves, however, it may change the soil composition and cause the next generations of the plants to no longer grow. This could eventually lead to deforestation and the many unique plant species living in Madagascar to die out completely.**