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Feild Methods Notes 2

This document discusses various methods for collecting and analyzing water quality data from the East River. Key parameters that will be measured include temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity, turbidity, enterococcus, nutrients, chlorophyll, and biochemical oxygen demand. Samples will be collected weekly from 3 sites over 2 cruises and analyzed using accepted scientific methods. Instrument calibration and quality control procedures will help ensure accurate results. Measured parameters can indicate water quality variations on seasonal, daily, and episodic timescales due to factors like biological activity, tidal mixing, rainfall, and sewage inputs.

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11 views

Feild Methods Notes 2

This document discusses various methods for collecting and analyzing water quality data from the East River. Key parameters that will be measured include temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity, turbidity, enterococcus, nutrients, chlorophyll, and biochemical oxygen demand. Samples will be collected weekly from 3 sites over 2 cruises and analyzed using accepted scientific methods. Instrument calibration and quality control procedures will help ensure accurate results. Measured parameters can indicate water quality variations on seasonal, daily, and episodic timescales due to factors like biological activity, tidal mixing, rainfall, and sewage inputs.

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rosendied
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Field Methods:

9/6/23
What are some local environmental issues?
- Eutrophication and seasonal hypoxia
- Harmful algal blooms
- Sewage contamination
- Chemical pollutants
- Emerging contaminants
- Invasive spec ies
- Decline in fish stocks
- Ocean acidification
- Sea level rise
- Heavy metals
- Erosion
- Poor air quality
- AND MORE! …

Hypothetical research project…


- Your research question?
• Will lantern flies have harmful affects on humans and the environment in the near future?
- Your data collection plan?
• What measurements will you take?
- Counting of flies
- Human health tests
- Other animal counting
- Plant counting
• Where?
- SUNY Maritime
• When?
- Whenever!
• And why?
- Predictions…
• They will cause other plants to die as they are eating too much, wineries out east will die.
Humans will have infections because of them.

FOR THE YEAR…


Research question:
- Is the water quality of the east river sampling sites poor fair or good?
- What factor impact water quality in east river?
Data collection plan:
- PH, DO, temp, salinity, turbidity, enterococcus, nutrients, Chl, BOD, phytoplankton
- 3 sites and 2 cruises
- Weekly

9/8/23

Water quality the basic chemical and physical characteristics of


water that determine its suitability for marine life or
for human uses
• Chemical
- Salinity: changes from tides and rainfall
- PH: phytoplankton removes CO2 which effects PH
- DO: effected by temp and phytoplankton
- BOD
- Dissolved nutrients: directly related to phytoplankton and sewage —> as organic
material is broken down it releases nitrogen in water
- Chlorophyll: temp and seasons cause different blooms, more for open water not shallow
• Physical
- Temp
- Tides
- Turbidity: impacted by organic and inorganic particles
- Rainfall: connected to sewage indicators, we see spikes in terrococus
• Biological
- Phytoplankton community and structure / abundance
- Microbial sewage indicators
- Algal blooms: by school caused by sewage no fertilizers
- DO carbon: also from sewage or high algal concentration from eutrophication

- EAST RIVER
• Tidal straight
• Connects the NY harbor and Hudson River to NY sound
• Right by us is place where sound meets the river
- Sewage outputs on diagram near our site
- Tide also impacts conditions from week to week
• Garbage etc.

- Field sampling water…


• Collect a portion of material small enough in volume to be transported and large enough for
analysis
• Buckets
• Retractable pole
• Van dorn sampler
• Niskin rosette —> for deep sea
• Preservation and storage
- Purpose: minimize physical, chemical, and biological changes
- Refrigeration prevents microbial degradation and slows down chemical reactions
- Plastic for most analysis except BOD you use glass
- Addiction of preserving chemicals (Lugol’s for plankton samples)
- All glassware must be ACID washed
• Soap + faucet water + acid rinse + 6 x DW
- Methods:
• Dissolved referee to any constituent that can pass through a 0.45 um filter

How does each parameter indicate behavior/variation as seasonal, daily, episodic and
why?
- Temp: seasonal, slowly decreases as weeks go on
- DO: could be seasonal as temp changes DO changes, daily because photosynthesis during the
day and not night, episodic if massive algal bloom
- PH: daily and seasonal just like DO because of CO2, impacted by biological activity in
coastal water, respiration adds CO2 and decreases the PH
- Salinity: daily, seasonal
- Bacteria: episodic
- Nutrients: seasonal, episodic
- Chlorophyll: seasonal, episodic
- Turbidity: seasonal, episodic

9/13/23
How do we know an instrument is “right”?
• Calibration the set of operations which establish under specified conditions the relationship
between values indicated by measuring
• Samples should be collected using consistent accepted methodologies and analyzed using
scientifically excepted methods
• Careful data management
• Clear labeling
• Complete data recording
• Calibration of monitoring instruments
• Compare to threshold data
• General calibration procedure…
• Prepare a series of standard solutions
• Plot the known standard vs the analytical signal and determine regression equation
• Use the equation and signal for unknown to find unknown
• For field probes steps 2 and 3 are automated
• y= mx + b based on chart
• What about biological samples like enterococcus?
• Quality control: chapter 5 page 72-77, precision vs accuracy
• Precision: all measurements will be made twice, SD will be reported for each replicate
measure
• Accuracy: all field and analytical equipment will be calibrated with samples of know
concentrations
• DO: tidal mixing, biological activity like photosynthesis and respiration
• Dissolved oxygen…
• Oxygen that is dissolved in water via ambient air diffusion or mixing from
photosynthetic release of oxygen
• Recorded in mg/l (ppm) or as percent saturation
• General range:
• Low: 0 mg/l or 0%
• High: 14 mg/l or 120%
• DO < 5 mg/l —> causes stress to aerobic organisms
• DO < 3 —> defined as hypoxic and increases likelihood of mortality
• DO =0 —> anoxic and very harmful
• Dissolved oxygen indicates high respiration of organic matter from nutrient inputs and
sewage inputs
• Also impacted by temperature like seasonal change and salinity but salinity is less
important at our sampling sites
• MAR may show more variability due to depth, HC and ID DO values will be more
influenced by surface mixing
• BOD…
• Measure of oxygen consumed in respiration of organic matter like sewage
• Overfill glass bottles with sample, quickly take DO measurement, cap, store in dark
• Salinity and Turbidity below….
Bacterial sewage indicators
- Get
MPN Method
- used to quantify bacteria in dilute samples or samples w complex matrices
- Based on color change in the presence of target bacteria
- Results compared to reference table
- Traditional MPN vs IDEXX
- Provides an automated multiple dilution system
- Effectively a tube serial dilution
- Number of positive wells or tube determines quantity of bacteria
IDEXX Method
- fluorescence occurs when target bacteria metabolize the substrate in the enterolert reagent
- Quanti-tray read under a 365nm UV light
Interpreting results…
- 1 MPN= 1 colony forming unit or CFU
- 1 CFU= 1 colony per 100 ml sample
- EPA guidelines for safe recreation are <35 MPN
- Example: 4 large wells, 2 small wells is = to 6.2 MPN, samples diluted to a 10 fold, 6.2 x 10=
62 MPN

Chlorophyll A
- Chlorophyl A is a green pigment found in the chloroplasts of plants that make photosynthesis
possible
- Recorded in micrograms per liter or ug/l
- High chl-a means abundant phytoplankton
- General range:
- Highly unlikely is 0 ug/l
- High is 30 ug/l

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