Brush Creek Experiment

Brush Creek Report

April 24, 2006

Surveyed March 27, 2006

Section V03

Instructor-Brigitte Thompson

Partners-Britney and Jordan

Introduction

Brush Creek is a nice river that we are trying to figure out what kind of pollution and other things in the creek. The purpose is to see if Brush Creek is at the level for people to able to get into it and be safe. My hypothesis is that the creek will have little pollution around the site area. The expected outcomes are that we will find lots of creatures there and the dissolved oxygen levels are high.

Site Description

The location that we surveyed was at site number three which is at sixty Third Street in Kansas. The locater is NE ј, NE ј, NW ј, Section 15, Township 125, and the Range is 25 East. The creek's floodplain is pretty much 100% residential, and the riparian cover is 60% trees, 30% grasses, and 10% bare ground. Stream bank conditions are 60% bedrock, 30% pavement, and 10% grasses, while the bed composition is 40% bedrock, 30% mud, and 30% gravel. The signs of human use are rock walls, pavement, and a walk bridge. Algae is only about 30% of the stream bottom, and of that 30% all of it is close growing. The color of the water is a dirty brown and I couldn't smell an odor.

Methods

The first test was for electrical conductivity in the creek and this is where you use a sensor and put it into the creek. The reason why we did this is to see if the water could support life and give off conductivity for things to grow. The second test was testing the hardness, nitrates and nitrites, and the pH level of the creek. Reasons why we test this is because only certain levels of pH support life and water hardness and nitrates also affects growth. Turbidity test is where you fill a tube and measure how many inches till you can see the bottom of the tube. This test shows how dirty or clean the water is and how visible the water is. The last test was for dissolved oxygen within the creek and this one took a while. Finding out what kind of saturation the creek has of oxygen is the most important thing in finding out if the creek can support life and is not polluted.

Results

Water Chemistry

The results for the water tests show that