Lab Report week 3.doc

1 Ground and Surface Water Interactions Laboratory Genaro Garcia III SCI 207: Our Dependence Upon the Environment Professor Nguyen 11/27/2023 Ground and Surface Water Interactions Laboratory

2 Introduction Water is a valuable resource for humans as not only is our source of drinking but is used for everything from food to clothing. Learning about how groundwater and surface water can be affected is important since only about 0.018% of water is available for consumption. The limited supply means we need to take care of resources and make sure it stays clean. Contaminated water would be a terrible thing as waterborne diseases like pneumonia, helicobacter pylori which creates gastric ulcers, and parasites like amoebae (Fewtrell & Bartram, 2001). We would be able to treat the water, but it is best to prevent contamination before it happens. My hypothesis for activity one is that, if you remove the water from the well, then the reservoir will remain the same. The reason is that the reservoir is the back up for the aquifer not the wells. I would predict that it would have the aquifer refill the well but since the aquifer is big enough. It would not use much water from the reservoir mean little to no change. Activity two I predict that, if you pollute the water from the reservoir, then it will pollute the groundwater supply. The reason is that the groundwater supply would be contaminated since the contaminated water from the reservoir would leak into the aquifer. Which ends up being the source for the well water. Even if there is a small about of polluted water, should be enough to contaminate the wells. The last activity my hypothesis is, if you add fertilizer to the new model, then the pond water and drinking reservoir will be polluted. I believe that this would occur since the house is on top of a hill. This would cause the water to run off the hill and go into the water supply. Both the well and the pond are at the bottom of the hill so it would cause the sources to become polluted. Results

3 Data Tables and Observations Activity One In the first well that had the higher soil we will refer to well A. It didn’t have any water in it after I had taken out the water from the well. I would assume that it would be due to the water being absorbed by the higher content of sand. After two minutes it looked like the level went back to the original markings. The reservoir did go down as the well-drained out. For well 2, the one that had a lower starting level. Which I would say since it had less sand it went down to the reservoir faster than well A. It took longer for me to drain our well B compared to well A. The same thing the water got back to same level as marking A. I would say the white straws made it hard to see if I was marking it accurately as I was having trouble seeing the level. The reservoir level ended up being the clay level when both wells were done being tested. Activity two When I injected the pollution, it stayed in the reservoir. I used a 12ml syringe and it did not turn all the water red. But the longer it sits there the slower that it was taking over the water supply. I did add some more water before I added the polluted water. The reservoir had a lot of sand, and the instructions weren’t clear on how much water needed to be there. After waiting for the minute, I can look in the well and see that the water change color a little a very fade pink color looks like the pollution is slowing getting to the well levels. The straws were hard again to see the water levels and color when I ran the test. That is why I need to look at the wells themselves to see if the water was getting contaminated inside the well. Activity three My observations regarding this activity are not as accurate as they would have been. The reason being that when I added water to the pond it all collapsed. This caused it to blend back

4 with the land. When I added water to the fertilized section the sand ran off the clay base the longer, we let it stand. When we checked the area of the clay, we could see that the water was not affected by the fertilizer. The water was a light brown mix of sand and water. The clay did a good job of blocking the water from penetrating the water. The well on the other side of the model’s water had pinkish to orange looking color. The well being the farthest away it seems to take the longest to be affected. The pond water was fulling polluted with fertilizer, but since the pond collapsed at me, I am not sure if the is because of run off or error on the build. Graphs and Photographs

5 Activity one Well A was the area the had the higher sand level. point C and A on the straw were the same level. Point B was lower about a cm from the bottom of the straw. Well B was the area that had the lower sand level. point C and A on the straw were at the same level. Point B did not record any water in the straw at all. Activity two

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