Warning! Don’t Drink the River Water: How Pollutants affect aquatic ecosystems.

Abstract

Over the years, it has become apparent that high levels of pollutants, either man-made or natural, have detrimental consequences on the health of stream, lakes, rivers and body of water; more specifically the affect the pollutants have on the concentration of dissolved oxygen (DO) in the stream and population of plankton. Which leads to the question: why do some bodies of water have a higher concentration of DO and algae in them, while others have less? Previous experiments measure the DO concentration of multiple bodies of water and measures certain pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorous; this way makes it difficult to say if these pollutants are the cause of the DO concentration being high or low since bodies of water are effected by various variables. Our experiment took water samples from one source and subjected those samples to different chemical concentration. This research will show the importance of waste management, that waste run off of any kind will have severe consequences to the ecosystem.