Comparing the Effects of Precipitation and Select Water Quality 12th Grade - 2020 SRS - 2020 SRS

Project Title: Comparing the Effects of Precipitation and Select Water Quality Parameters in Two Different Suburban Watersheds
School name: Crestwood High School
Teacher Name(s): Diana Rae Johns
Student Name(s): Zeinab Awada Haneen Fouani
Grade Level: Secondary School (grades 9-12, ages 14-18)
Abstract: Evaluating the water quality of a stream is essential for determining potential sources of impairment and the effects of flooding. The Rouge River and the Ecorse Creek are two suburban rivers located in North and South Dearborn Heights. This research sought to investigate the correlation between rainfall type and amount and select water parameters. The water parameters measured included dissolved oxygen, turbidity, conductivity, water temperature, and salinity. Measurements were taken throughout a period of 4 months, extending from the beginning of July 2019 to the end of October 2019. During the investigation period, rainfall amounts often varied with heavy precipitation from thunderstorms and steady rain falling from warm front rain as well as dry periods. At each river, Vernier probes were used to determine conductivity, dissolved oxygen, water temperature, and salinity. However, a water sample from both rivers was taken home to measure turbidity using a Vernier turbidity probe. With much of the turbidity, conductivity, and water temperature measurements, there was a direct correlation between precipitation and the levels of those parameters in the water. However, DO had an inverse relationship with rainfall while salinity had a more variable relationship.
Protocols:Precipitation, Conductivity, Dissolved Oxygen, Water Temperature, Water Transparency, Salinity (including Titration)
Presentation Poster: View Document
Language(s): English
Report page: link

Dear Zeinab and Haneen,
I am Varun Paul, a faculty in the Geosciences Department at Mississippi State University. I teach courses related to Water Resources and my research focuses on investigating surface water and groundwater quality. 
I am very impressed with your project. I especially liked that you were able to collect as much data as you could in the four month period. I felt that questions you asked were very important to understand the changes in surface water quality. Precipitation, as you mentioned, plays a very important role in influencing water quality. I was also glad to see that you were able to compare precipitation with discharge data. Great job!!!
I had two minor suggestions that you might want to consider for this and future projects:
1) I would recommend the use of correlation analysis to compare any two variables to check how well they are related to each other. You can do this very easily with Excel. For example, you can take rainfall values in Figure 6 as your x axis and conductivity on y axis. When you plot these two, you can use Excel to find out the R^2 (correlation) value. The closer this value is to one (1.0), the more related those two variables are. It is a very simple step and can give you more definite values for your analysis.
2) I liked that you compared DO with temperature and your explanation makes perfect sense. I would encourage you to think about how precipitation affects salinity, pH and other parameters. Salinity, especially, is very interesting because depending on the surrounding land area, salinity in streams/rivers can either decrease or increase with rainfall.

Keep up the wonderful work and keep asking such important questions. 
Good luck!

Hi, Zeinab and Haneen. I'm Lynne Hehr, a GLOBE Trainer and Partner with research degrees in Geology. I have been with the GLOBE program for 25 years as a Scientist trainer and have been involved with GLOBE Student Research Symposiums since they began several years ago. You two have done quite a lot of work as far as data collection and data analysis. Well done, you two! The fact that your research was conducted over a long period of time shows your dedication to the study. You have also chosen an area of research that has a real impact on your community and lends itself to the type of GLOBE protocols you chose. As a point to ponder, you might consider soil characterization and soil moisture components in an extended study…the idea of infiltration that you bring into play is a good point for further study. The badges fit your study well. Excellent job to both of you.

Dear Zeinab and Haneen, My name is Dr. John Hehr and I am a retired professor of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas. My research interests center on atmospheric sciences, specifically, tree-ring analysis to build climate back through time. You did a great job in designing your project and were diligent in gathering considerable data over the research time frame. As in many research projects, more questions surface than initially thought. You used GLOBE ptotocols and suggested equipment to gather your data in a very worthwhile way. It would have been great if you could have collaborated with the school in Thailand in order to compare data and results. It would also be interesting to use the stream gauge data to look at the increased frequency of floods in the region and what this means for water quality. This was a very ambitious project with considerable data collected. Keep up the good work!