Happy Earth day fellow Earthlings! What an excited sort of progress my project has made. I created a graph that merged my results from nutrients found in my stormwater management ponds before a rain and the more recent results from nutrients found in my SMPs after a rain as well as data from rainwater that was collected during the storm! Now, at each pond I decided to take samples from three different areas in the pond to see if one area of the pond was more susceptible to nutrient pollution than another so at both the Halifax Plantation pond (HPSMP) and the Tuscawilla Park pond (TPSMP) the water analyzed before the storm are samples 1, 2 & 3 for three locations in one pond and these translate into 4, 5 & 6 after the storm but were taken from the same locations respectively. In the center of the graph dividing the two events is the nutrient readings I found in rainwater.
As you can see, there are some variances in the results, some sites experience a loss in nutrient concentrations while others experience results that require me to break the bar graph. Noting the nutrient criterion line for total phosphorus and identifying total phosphorus as the orange bars, we can see that all the readings for phosphate are either just at or above the nutrient criterion line. Now there are some plants in each pond so decreased nutrient readings could have something to do with the uptake of nutrients through plants following this storm. Let's look at the rainwater for a minute though. The nutrient concentrations found in rainwater were greater than every site with the exception of HPSMP-5 which I'll talk about in a minute. According to my chemical spreadsheet, there are many possible sources of nitrate and phosphates in our atmosphere, including the burning of fossil fuels for nitrate and soil dust or seawater for phosphate. I'll definitely have to examine the rainwater results more closely in the coming week as I see another storm is coming over the Gulf so I hope to be able to get more data for comparison.
Now, I want my audience to better understand the view of the lake that supports my hypothesis of one site being more susceptible to nutrient pollution than another. Below are pictures of the Halifax Plantation pond.
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| A view of the entire pond at Halifax Plantation |
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| View of Site 1 & 4 |
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| View of Site 2 & 5 |
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| View of Site 3 & 6 |
| If you compare the data found with pictures of the quality of water at each site, you can see that the results found at site 2/5 are likely not an error. Further investigation is required as I look to determine the source of this as well as collect more rain and water from a coming storm to expand my data library. |
Emily--we need to talk about your graph.
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