ECSU REU OMPS 2013 :: Micheal Cobb:: Research

Michael Cobb

Research Experience for Undergraduates at Elizabeth City State University in Elizabeth City, North Carolina
Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets in Ocean, Marine, and Polar Science
2013

The Watermark Project: Human Actions Impacting the Quality of Water
http://nia.ecsu.edu/ww/summer13/wwposters-2013/watermark.jpg

Abstract

We investigated local stream water quality to determine the impacts of agriculture and development. We selected four sites two controlled sites, one agricultural site, and one developmental site. We tested the water's temperature, dissolved oxygen levels, pH, and specific conductivity with a multi-parameter meter. We also collected water samples to analyze the ammonia, nitrite, and the turbidity. Macro invertebrates were also sampled in vegetative and muddy areas at each sample site.

As we expected the control sites had lowest turbidity levels. Ammonia levels were highest in the developed and agricultural areas but we were surprised that the highest levels occurred in the developed area. Dissolved oxygen was moderate in most sites with the control 1 area at the swamp having lower values than other sites. Specific conductivity was high in the developed area and low in the second control site (river tributary) but there was little difference between control 1 and agriculture. Surprisingly pH was the highest in the developed site. This is most likely due to the headwater source for the developed site being ground water.

There were no macro invertebrates at the agricultural site. The second control site had more tolerant macro-invertebrates than other sites. We calculated Water Quality Index (WQI) scores and Macro-invertebrate Index (MI) scores. Our initial results for WQI had the developed site obtaining the highest score (better quality) but removing pH from the index resulted in a more accurate result with controls having the better water quality. This was consistent with the MI results. Reasons for removing pH from WQI are due to the expectation that even pure swamp water would have low pH naturally.