Department of Fish and Game

2004 Education & Outreach Newsletter

Stream Monitoring Activity

Water - Quality Monitoring

For water to support and sustain life, the quality must meet the users’ needs. All water has a quality – good, poor, or somewhere in between. A number of factors can affect the quality of water some factors are natural and some are human-related. Natural factors that can influence water quality involve soil type, dissolved minerals, rock formations, and vegetation. Human related activities include runoff from cities, houses, factories, and farms.

There is a direct relationship between healthy water and a healthy ecosystem. All life needs a supply of healthy water. Waterways such as rivers, lakes and estuaries are important to humans and wildlife. Waterways are used for drinking water, transportation, recreation and as a habitat for many wildlife species.

One of the ways to measure the health of a waterway is through water quality monitoring. Water is tested to find its chemical, physical, and biological conditions. A water quality test provides a picture of what the water contained at that moment. The test may collect information about the water temperature, clearness or cloudiness (turbidity) and flow. Some of the chemical tests are for pH, chlorine, and dissolved oxygen. Examples of biological parameters are aquatic insects, bacteria and viruses. Water quality monitoring is testing that is repeated over time. It may be done at one or several testing sites.

Use the Aquatic WILD Activity, Water Canaries, to investigate a stream or pond using sampling techniques. With this activity students identify several aquatic organisms, assess the relative environmental quality of the water based on pH, water temperature and the presence of a diversity of organisms.

Build a water unit with Aquatic WILD Activities: What’s in the Water?, What’s in the Air? and Something’s Fishy Here! These activities direct students to make inferences and test hypothesis concerning acidic precipitation, major sources of aquatic pollution and the cause-and-effect relationships involving aquatic–related pollution.

Activity adapted from Healthy Water Healthy People published by the Watercourse & Project Wet

For this activity the water quality tests have been conducted and the data recorded for each season along the same stream.

A. Have students review the data and make a graph for each test that records the seasonal data.

An example the temperature graph has been completed (below).

The Monitoring Key will help to explain the tests and measurements.

B. Have students analyze the information provided by the graphs and answer the following questions.

Questions
  1. What season of the year is the river the warmest?
  2. What season does the river have the least dissolved oxygen?
  3. Do dissolved oxygen levels get higher or lower when the river warms?
  4. When does the river have the highest flow?
  5. When does the river have the lowest clarity?
  6. Are they the same season? What can cause the low clarity?
Data
Winter
     
Spring
Temp: 36 F (2 c)   Temp: 45 F (7 c)
Dissolved Oxygen: 10 ppm   Dissolved Oxygen: 9 ppm
Flow: 3 fps   Flow: 10 fps
Clarity: 50 inches   Clarity: 5 inches
         
Summer
  
Fall
Temp: 63 F (17 c)   Temp: 52 F (11 c)
Dissolved Oxygen: 4 ppm   Dissolved Oxygen: 7 ppm
Flow: 7 fps   Flow: 5 fps
Clarity: 25 inches   Clarity: 40 inches
Example: Temperature Graph

Monitoring Key
  • Temperature: the higher the water temperature, the lower the dissolved oxygen.
  • Dissolved Oxygen: measured in parts per million, or ppm, (a very small amount). One grain of salt in a liter of water represents on ppm of salt. Dissolved oxygen is a measure of how much oxygen is available to plants and animals living in the water. Fish take dissolved oxygen from the water through their gills.
  • Water Flow: measured in feet per second, or fps (how many feet a stream flows in one second). Stream flow can be used with other tests to determine water quality, for example streams with low flows may have high temperatures.
  • Clarity or Cloudiness: measures how clear or cloudy a body of water is. The farther down you can see into a stream, the higher the clarity. Sediment, or soil that is suspended in water, can affect water clarity.
Answers
  1. Summer
  2. Summer
  3. The oxygen level is lower as the water temperature rises
  4. Spring
  5. Spring
  6. Yes, sediments that erode from the land go into the river during high flows.
Additional information