ISLE ROYALE POPULATION GRAPH
Isle Royale is an island in Lake Michigan where scientists have been looking at the wolf and moose populations in
isolation for many years. You will graph the relationship between these two populations and analyze the graph to see
if you can figure out what’s going on.
1. Go to Google and login.
2. Open a new Google Doc. Title it [YOUR FIRST AND LAST NAME] POPULATION GRAPH
3. Copy and Paste this entire document to your new doc.
4. Open a Google Sheet
5. Toggle from the new Google Sheet you just made back to your instruction sheet.
6. Select all the data including the words “Year, Wolves, and Moose” and copy the information.
7. Toggle back to the Google Sheet. Select the first cell (square A:1).
8. When you paste the data into that cell it will automatically fill all the other cells.
9. While those cells are still highlighted, select the “insert” tab and choose “chart...” from the pull down menu.
10. The default setting for the chart is a line graph, which is what we want.
11. Notice that the wolf data is so small that you can barely tell what’s going on.
12. To fix the wolf data problem, click on the wolf line of the graph. This action will open up the editing menu for the
wolf data line. In that menu it should say, “axis.” The drop down menu just below it will say “left axis.” Change it to
“right axis.” Notice that the right axis has been adjusted so that 50 is the value at the top of the right axis.
13. Select the chart; copy it, and paste it back on this document. (You might want to text wrap [right click and select
“wrap text” located below the chart] it and resize it so you have room to answer the questions below.)
QUESTIONS- Type your answers onto this document between the questions. Change the font color or style
so that it is easier to discern your responses from the questions.
1. Do you see a correlation between the up and downs of the wolf and moose populations. Explain your answer.
2. What was the size of the wolf population at the beginning of the study, the moose population? What about at the
end of the study for the moose and the wolf?
3. During which period, 1958- 1968, 1969- 1978, 1979- 1998, 1998- 2002, was there the greatest increase in the wolf
population? What about the moose population?
4. What year was there the greatest number of wolves on Isle Royale, what about the moose?
5. What four factors affect the population size in an ecosystem?
YEAR WOLVES MOOSE
1958 20 563
1959 22 610
1960 22 628
1961 23 639
1962 20 663
1963 20 707
1964 28 733
1965 26 765
1966 22 912
1967 22 1042
1968 17 1268
1969 18 1295
1970 20 1439
1971 23 1493
1972 24 1435
1973 31 1467
1974 41 1355
1975 44 1282
1976 34 1143
1977 40 1028
1978 43 1028
1979 50 910
1980 30 863
1981 14 872
1982 23 932
1983 24 1038
1984 22 1115
1985 20 1192
1986 16 1268
1987 12 1335
1988 12 1397
1989 15 1216
1990 12 1313
1991 12 1590
1992 13 1879
1993 17 1770
1994 16 2422
1995 22 1163
1996 24 500
1997 14 699
1998 25 750
1999 29 850
2000 19 900
2001 17 1100
2002 19 900
