Lancaster Diary
Well, we're back here in
not-so-sunny Lancaster seeing friends again and getting back into
the swing of school. We both have had two papers do so farm the
latter being on various methods of water quality testing used here
in the UK to test a river not far from the University. This river
had a sewage treatment plant on its bank so samples were taken from
a site upstream, a site downstream, and a site right at the plant.
The first, BMWP, stands for Biological Monitoring of the Working
Party, created by the working party in conjunction with the
Environment Department in the 70's. This method assigns a
sensitivity marking to all macroinvertebrates that live in the river
and in essence measures the amount of oxygen present in the river.
The higher the sensitivity, the higher the number. Then, scientists
visit the river and pick select sites and perform what is called a
kick sample where the water is "kicked" or disturbed for three
minutes straight, and then the macroinvertebrates are collected.
Then, the total number of BMWP scores are added up to get a BMWP
score for the river. The higher the number the higher the quality.
The second method, Diatom Index is based on less visible organisms.
Different sub-methods are used in different European countries to
calculate these, but in England we use the Kelly system known as the
Trophic Diatom Index. Using an equation of constants based on the
diatom, and abundance findings at the river, one can calculate the
TDI. Here, the TDI is indicative of inorganic substances in the
river, therefore higher numbers mean worse water quality. The River
Wenning was found to have moderate water quality based on these two
methods.
I am curious as to what various methods are used in the states and
if they are similar at all to the ones we used. These two pictures
are of Erica and me color coding our notebooks for school!
Jen
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