I'll be at Spring Valley Park in Kansas City, Mo leading water quality monitoring activities with the families that come to the Kids Fishing Derby for Urban Outdoor Day presented by Urban American Outdoors and Kansas City Missouri Parks & Rec. I hope people see the obvious connection between the activity - fishing - and the importance of maintaining healthy waters for wildlife and future outdoor recreational activities. I also hope they make the next obvious connecton to their own daily habits and how that might relate to water quality.
Water Quality can be monitored in two different ways: abiotic monitoring and biotic monitoring.
Abiotic monitoring involves measuring the important physical parts of the water environment such as
- the pH of the water: how acid or basic it is
- the amount of dissovled oxygen in the water
- turbidity: how clear or cloudy the water is
- temperature: how warm or cool the water is
Macroinvertebrates are very good indicators as to the health of a stream, lake, or pond |
The presence of many different species and other predatory invertebrates is a good sign that the water habitat can support many food chain levels. |
Healthy fish species are also a good sign. Remember, vertebrate species like fish and birds ultimately depend on invertebrate, microbe, and plant species for their survival, too. |
Are you celebrating World Water Monitoring Day? If so, how? Tell me about your adventures.
4 comments:
I really had no idea that you could gather so much information on water by that. I guess I just never thought of the process. Very cool. :-)
You did not just posted water by give much information. Great job!
http://junneth-yellowbelle.blogspot.com/
You found some interesting insects in the water. My eye was immediately drawn to the big ant. :-)
Thanks. It's alot of fun doing stream ecology and water monitoring. It's a great hands-on science activity for all ages.
And I was super excited about the big ant, too.
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