Water Quality

Created By: James Rothwell

Currently Used By: Emma Shuttleworth, Matt Dennis

Instructions

Part 1 - preamble (usually takes about 40 minutes)

Walk the students to the clearing in the woods out the back of the field centre.

Talk them through what influences water quality, why we should care and how we might measure it, using the handout as a guide. I don't usually give the students the handout till later on so they have to think!

Get them to think about what might be influencing water quality in the stream next to them. They usually mention the field centre pretty quickly (cars, sewers, litter, septic tank, etc).

Head to the equipment store and grab the waders, kick nets and buckets.

Walk back to the clearing and get them to think about how you might design an experiment to test if the field centre is influencing the water quality in the river. Key considerations:

• Take samples upstream and downstream of field centre
• Take the same number of samples at each site
• Sustain kicking effort across all samples
• Kick for same amount of time per sample (two min)

Part 2 - sampling (usually takes about an hour)

Split the students into pairs and get them into the waders. Note - no one will be wearing the correct shoe size.

Go through health and safety. Warn that it might be slippery underfoot and that they should leave all phones/electronics in their bags well away from the water. Stress that they shouldn't go in above knee height and to avoid fast flowing water. There are no heroes in water quality!

Get the students in the stream near the clearing in the woods. Unless the level is extremely low, don't let them cross tot he other side.

Get them to do two rounds of kicking each (for consistency). Time them from the safety of the bank so no one risks losing their phone in the water.

After each round of kicking, get them to empty their nets into the buckets. Make sure their's a bit of water in the buckets too to keep everything alive.

When the upstream site is done, walk over to the downstream sampling site just across the road next to the bridge. On the way, drop off the full buckets at the equipment store and grab some empty ones.

Sample as above, then head back to the equipment store.

Part 3 - looking at what they've found (usually takes about an hour)

Equipment

Each student should have:

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Staff require:

Keep an eye on the weather and stream level. If there has been a lot of rain the river may be in spate and it will be dangerous to run this project.

Get the kit ready in the equipment store before you find your group.

Handouts

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