Water Quality

Water Quality Lab

Introduction:

It is important to have clean rivers in Costa Rica with high water quality since they provide potable and drinkable water. Potable water is the water that is certified for human consumption, while drinkable water is water used for human use, like watering plants or washing dishes.

Water quality consists of the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of water. To measure the water quality of a river, it was needed to measure the parameters of drinking water in the river “Quebrada Alondra”. These parameters include measuring the water’s PH (how acidic or basic it is), turbidity (how clear it is), dissolved oxygen, (the amount of dissolved oxygen it contains), temperature, and conductivity levels (how many dissolved solids are in the water). However, to have more accurate results, the types of macro invertebrates found in the river were also analyzed. Macro invertebrates may include insects, worms, snails, mussels, leeches, and crayfish, which live in the rivers and any other body of water for most of its life cycle. Macro invertebrates have different tolerance levels to pollution. Some insects may be really sensitive to pollution, while others may withstand high levels of it and therefore can live in more contaminated waters. Therefore, scientists use these characteristics of each insect and their tolerance to polluted water as an indicator of the water quality of a river.

Hypothesis: If the water quality of the “Río Quebrada Alondra” and “Río Virilla” are measured using the SparkvueHD and the type of macro invertebrates found in each, the “Virilla” will result to be much more polluted than the “Quebrada Alondra” since it is closer to the city and industries and it therefore will have more pollutants inside.

List of Materials:

• Bug catching nets.

• SparkvueHD

• IPad

• Timer

• Alcohol

• Petri Disks

• Lamps

• Mouth masks

Procedure:

The experiment that was done in the “Río Quebrada Alondra” to measure its water quality was divided into three parts. The first part included using special nets to catch macro invertebrates in shallow parts of the river. The second part consisted of using SparkvueHD to measure the physical parameters of the water, and the third part involved placing the macro invertebrates that were caught in petri disks filled with alcohol and separating them by their tolerance for polluted water. After doing the three steps done above, the results of the water quality level of “Quebrada Alondra” were recorded into tables and compared to the results of the “Río Virilla”.

Results for the water quality of “Quebrada Alondra”

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