Furnace Brook Lab

Furnace Brook Water Study

Introduction: Rivers house many organisms, and are necessary for the survival of an ecosystem. Rivers provide a home for aquatic animals, and water for land animals. Depending on what kind of organisms you find, you can figure out how polluted water is, and other variables as well. In this project we will test a few variables of water condition, what lives in the water, and the flow rate, to asses if they affect one another.

Research Question: Will there be differences in two different sites on the same river in temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH value, turbidity, number of macroinvertebrates, and flow rate.

Hypothesis: I predict that many of the variables will fluctuate, and some of the variables will cause the other variables to change.

Variable Identification:

Controlled Variable	Method to control the variable
Stream	Used the same stream for both locations
Location on the stream	Used 2 separate locations
Practice golf ball	Used the same golf ball in all trials

Experimental Setup : Two separate areas were found on the same stream, to see if certain characteristics changes. On the first day a net was used to catch any macroinvertebrates that were in the stream at the two separate locations. At both locations the temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, and turbidity were measured. On the second time in the stream the same two locations were used to measure stream flow with a practice golf ball. Again the same measurements were made, that had been made on the first day. On the second day for measuring the water flow the average depth of the stream was also taken.

Procedure:

1. Found first location
2. Took the temperature of the water
3. Measured the dissolved oxygen of the water
4. Measured the pH of the water
5. Measured the turbidity of the water
6. Placed the net into the water
7. Placed a rock at the bottom of the net to hold it down
8. Kicked up dirt and rocks from the stream to reveal the macroinvertebrates
9. Took the net out and emptied the macroinvertebrates into a pan for counting
10. Counted the number of each organism
11. Repeated steps 6-10
12. Found a second location
13. Repeated steps 2-11 at the new location
14. Found the original location again
15. Measured out 40 feet
16. Measured the depth at the start of the 40 feet 6 times and then averaged
17. Dropped the practice golf ball at the start line as the timer began timing
18. Let the ball flow down stream to the finish line
19. Caught the ball at the end and stopped timer
20. Repeated steps 17-19 5 times
21. Found the second location again
22. Repeated steps 15-20

Data:

	Latitude	Longitude
Location 1	N 43°00'59.4”	W 76°10'17”
Location 2	-----------------------------------------------------	------------------------------------------------------

(Day 1)	Temperature	Dissolved Oxygen	pH	Turbidity
Location 1	18	0	7	0
Location 2	18	0	7	0

(Day 2)	Temperature	Dissolved Oxygen	pH	Turbidity
Location 1	10	0	7	0
Location 2	10	0	7	0

	Location 1 (feet)	Location 2 (feet)
Depth 1	0.17	0.17
Depth 2	0.25	0.21
Depth 3	0.33	0.42
Depth 4	0.42	0.25
Depth 5	0.21	0.5
Depth 6	0.33	0.5
Average	0.29	0.34

	Location 1 (seconds)	Location 2 (seconds)
Trial 1	22.28	20.7
Trial 2	17.78	26.35
Trial 3	23.43	24.38
Trial 4	24.38	29.16
Trial 5	24.32	25.83
Average	22.44	25.28

Results :

	Velocity (feet/second)
Location 1	0.56
Location 2	0.63

Discussion: Inside the stream, very little macroinvertebrates were found. I expected there to be so many more little creatures in there. The water flow may have affected this outcome. The dissolved oxygen, pH values, and turbidity were the same in both locations on both days. The temperature is the only thing that changed over the two days, but was the same in both locations on both days. The flow rate did not change as greatly as I expected between our two sites. The amount of more macro-invertebrates we found at the second site surprised me, because I expected the higher stream flow to have less, not more.

Evaluation: In this lab there were a few issues. One of the issues being the time constraints caused us to have to do this lab across two days on a Monday and then the following Friday. This may have altered the results a lot, because it rained very much over that week. The temperature of the stream may have also effected the flow and macroinvertebrates. There is also some human error that could have occurred a few times. We could have counted wrong or missed an organism, we could have measured the distance wrong, there could be a mess up in the timing, and there could also be a change in where the ball was dropped from.

Conclusion: The data recorded shows the exact opposite of what my hypothesis says. I expect for the different locations to change all of the variables, but they did not change very much. The dissolved oxygen, pH, and turbidity were the exact same in both locations on both days. The temperature was the same in both locations on the certain day, but across the two days the temperatures were different. My hypothesis was incorrect and the results surprised me.

References:

"Chapter 4 Macroinvertebrates and Habitat." Chapter 4 Macroinvertebrates and Habitat. N.p., n.d. Web. Oct. 2015.

"Ecosystem Processes and Energy Flow." Grassland Conservation Council of British Columbia. N.p., n.d. Web. Oct. 2015.