Student Research Reports

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We belong to the Science Club at Ikuta High School in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Since 2016, we have been participating in GLOBE activities, conducting water quality surveys of a small river called Hirase River, which is located very close to our school, using the GLOBE Hydrology Protocol once a week. In this report, we analyzed the global trends of water-related data (i.e., water temperature, pH, nitrates, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen) collected from all around the world through GLOBE using a Python program. We also collected some environmental variables (i.e., urban areas around each GLOBE observation site and river width) and evaluated the relationships among the data of water qualities and the environmental variables. We found that the average water temperature has been rising year by year as global trend, indicating the effects of global warming. We also found that the overall GLOBE observation sites were divided into three categories: (a) narrow rivers located in a rich natural setting, (b) wide rivers in urban areas, and (c) narrow rivers in urban areas by cluster analysis. We examined the factors affecting water qualities in these three types of rivers and clarified the characteristics of the Hirase River, which we are observing, in comparison to these three types of rivers. In addition to the weekly hydrosphere observations in our school, we are conducting two types of laboratory experiments: one is how to use phytoplankton and aquatic plants to improve water quality, and the other is testing whether Fulvic acid in water promotes photosynthesis. By examining global trends of water quality data around the world, we could find some basic insights into our future experiments for water purification and photosynthesis promotion in the river aiming at mitigation of global warming.