That pretty-looking ivy you're admiring at Mason Mill Park could actually be hurting other plants and biosystems around it.
That's the message a group of Georgia Tech students for residents after studying a species of plant commonly known as English Ivy. The students have been studying invasive species as part of a biology lab, according to floraphile, an Atlanta plants blog.
From the post:
The Atlanta Botanical Garden recently played host to a mini-film festival. The filmmakers were Georgia Tech students enrolled in Dr. Cara Gormally’s Biology 1511 laboratory. The films capped a semester-long project investigating the biological effects of the Urban Habitat Restoration Project[1] at Mason Mill Park, part of an initiative to remove invasive species and restore native habitats in public parks and other areas in metro-Atlanta. The class was divided into three groups tasked with generating a research question and a laboratory experiment designed to investigate it. The students then wrote up their findings. Finally, each group made a short educational film explaining a couple of concepts central to their research. The films had to be narrative and were graded on their educational and entertainment values.
So, you get to see some amateur films about the issue as well. (Some of them are bizarre.) But it's good information.
And here's a previous post about invasive species in the park: