1. You will be examining the water quality of Raquette River and Woodstock Pond.
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Question
1. You will be examining the water quality of Raquette River and Woodstock Pond. In your own words, how would you define water quality? What factors would you consider to determine if a body of water is healthy or unhealthy? Based on your knowledge of the two locations of these bodies of water, develop a testable hypothesis about these two bodies of water.
2. Find a relevant news article that discusses coral bleaching and ocean acidification. Explain the relationship between ocean acidification and global climate change.
Explanation / Answer
Water quality is the measure of suitability of water for sustaining various requirement, that could be of humans or any other species. It is the physical, chemical, biological and, radiological charactereristic of water. A given water quality could be suitable for one purpose but not another. For example, drinking water could be suitable for irrigation but, irrigation water may not always be suitable for drinking purposes.
The various factors that affect the quality of water, making it healthy or unhealthy are sedimentation, turbidity, erosion, amount of dissolved oxygen, pH level, temeprature, decayed organic material, microorganisms and bacteria, pesticides, toxins, oil, detergent and, litter.
For testing of water quality, the sample needs to be collected from the source. The testing needs to include a physical test, chemical test, bacteriological test and, mineral test.
Physical tests would involve testing the color and, odour of water sample. This would give an idea about possible presence of minerals, algae or weeds, decaying organic matter, industrial waste contamination.
Chemical tests would include testing of pH levels, water hardness, presence of chemical compound, BOD (biochemical oxygen demand).
Bacteriological tests would test for the presence of indicator bacteria such as E.coli. This would rule out the fecal contamination of water.
Mineral test would need to be conducted to determine the amount of minerals in the water.
Ocean acidification refers to the increase in the amount of hydrogen ion, bicarbonate ion in the ocean water leading to decreased pH levels causing acidification. The ocean acidification leads to reduced amount of calcium carbonate in the water, leading to dissolution of calcium carbonate from marine organisms. Coral bleaching refers to the phenomenon where corals expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living inside their tissues due to adverse conditions such as high ocean temeprature. This causes the corals to loose their color and, turning white. According to a report published in Earth Journalism network, both these process are affecting the food chains. As the microorganisms are slowly dying, the marine animals dependent on these microorganism for food have a threat of becoming extinct thus, impacting the food chain causing the reduced supply of foood for human consumption too.
The global climate change involves the greater emission of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This CO2 concentration is more than that can be absorbed by the natural processes. This CO2 gets absorbed by the ocean water, where it reacts with the H2O molecules to form H2CO3. This carbonic acid further breaks down into H+ and HCO3- ions. The hydrogen ion then, reacts with the CO3- ions present in ocean water to form more HCO3- ions. This increased amount of hydrogen and bicarbonate ion leads to decrease in pH levels of water causing acidification.
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