WATER QUALITY ANALYSIS

Objectives

• Work in teams to monitor the health of BCC's Central Campus man-made wetlands on a weekly basis.
  
• Follow a protocol to collect and analyze data to assure that the results are accurate and reliable.
  
• Tabulate and graph the data collected at the end of the semester
  
• Find if there is a correlation between different water quality parameters, or how those parameters change between stations or with time.
  
• Draw conclusions about the health of the wetlands system taking into consideration water quality parameters as well as biological, physical, and geological data obtained in other classes.
  
• Submit data collected to our water quality web page.
  

Logistics

• Station sites will be clearly marked along the wetlands.
  
• The instructor will explain the project and give background information at the beginning of the semester. A site visit early in the semester is also important. Mini-updates and discussions throughout the semester are very useful.
  
• Teams of students are selected, giving students a number of different options as far as sampling dates and times.
  
• Teams of 2 to 4 students will meet on a rotational basis once a week (outside of regular class time) to collect and analyze data. Depending on class size, each student may need to do the analysis 1 to 3 times during the semester.
  
• The last week of class time in the semester is devoted to tabulating, plotting, and discussing data.
  
• A final report that incorporates both water quality and additional data (biology, geology, statistics, etc) is due at the end of the semester, reporting on the overall health of the wetlands system
  

Water Quality Parameters
Time and money constraints dictate the number of parameters to be measured. Common water quality parameters include:

	*Temperature		*Dissolved Oxygen		Biological Oxygen Demand
	*pH			*Phosphates			*Nitrates
	*Ammonium		Turbidity			Total Dissolved Solids
	Alkalinity		Hardness			*Chloride/Salinity
	*Fecal Coliform	Heavy Metals			Water flow/*Water depth

        Redox potential

*indicates tests conducted at BCC's Central Campus wetlands, 1998-2000
Tools
Inexpensive and easy to use:
Kits such as the ones sold by Hach (800-227-4224, www.hach.com) are inexpensive (e.g. a 50 test-kit for high range nitrate: $12.50) and easy to use for beginners.

More expensive, requires maintenance and knowledge of computers:
Vernier Software (503-277-2299, www.vernier.com) provides a variety of probes and ion selective electrodes (typically $100-$200 each) that can be easily interfaced to an existing computer using an interface also sold by Vernier. The probes can also be interfaced to a graphing calculator, allowing for true "on-site" data collection and analysis.

Vernier has outstanding customer support, as well as a "Water Quality with Computers" lab manual with 16 experiments covering various water quality tests. Each experiment gives background and detailed testing procedures. The software provided by Vernier allows for the collection, analysis, and plotting of data in the lab.

Very expensive, quick and easy to use:
Hydrolab (800-949-3766, www.hydrolab.com) manufactures rugged, easy to use multiprobes. Our H20 multiprobe can measure pH, specific conductance/salinity, dissolved oxygen, water temperature, depth, and redox potential. An easy calibration, and the multiprobe is ready to use by dipping in the water and reading all measured parameters from the Scout2 display (which can also interface to a computer). Unfortunately, each multiprobe is in the range of $5,000.

Data Collection @ Analysis
All data collected can be found and downloaded from our website http://fs.broward.cc.fl.us/~lprecedo/*

Water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen and salinity (or specific conductance) were collected on-site with the Hydrolab multiprobe

Water depth was recorded at one site only, from a meter stick anchored approximately 10 feet away from the shore (we were only interested in relative variations in water level form day to day)

Additional data points such as air temperature, % cloudiness, and recent precipitation were also recorded on-site

Water samples were collected in sample bottles, and brought immediately back to the lab. Phosphate and nutrient analysis were conducted in the lab, using a colorimeter (phosphate) and ion specific electrode (nitrates and ammonia) as outlined in the "Water Quality Analysis" lab manual from Vernier.

Data were recorded in an Excel spreadsheet, and various graphs were generated. All students plotted each water quality parameter vs. station number (for each of the sampling dates. See example graph). In addition, some parameters that appeared to be related to each other were also plotted (e.g. D.O. vs. temperature, etc).

Main contact
Dr. Laura Precedo-Choudhury, 954-475-6675, lprecedo@broward.cc.fl.us

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9653672. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.