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Sawmill Creek Hypothesis

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The big question of this study is, Does Sawmill Creek have a good water quality, and a healthy ecosystem? We made a hypothesis stating that Sawmill Creek has a healthy ecosystem, and a good water quality. The findings were quite liked amongst people, with the pH right around 7, making it nearly neutral. The DO was a little different with getting two very different answers for both tests, but making it appear as though it has a good level, right around 10 ppm. The ecosystem is decently diverse, with the findings of different trees and plants around the stream, and the different macroinvertebrates, with only 1 aquatic plant found, which was algae. With all the plants, and macroinvertebrates, none of them seem to be polluting, or causing poor…show more content…
Our data clearly shows that the water quality is pretty good, and the ecosystem is fairly descent. The MSHA gave Sawmill Creek a 73.5 out of 100 for the habitat once we added up all the numbers from the questions we answered, giving us the conclusion that the ecosystem was fairly descent. The LabQuest gave us a pH of 6.88 and a DO of 10.85 ppm, and the chemical test kit gave us results of 7.5 for the pH, and 5 ppm for DO. Both of the pH tests gave us results around 7, which is the neutral, and is what you want. The DO is where we got 10.85 ppm for one, and 5 ppm for the other. A good result is 10 ppm, so with these results, we can conclude the that DO is somewhat decent, with both the results put together. The average velocity of our ten meter area of the creek was .29 m/s. A velocity of .29 m/s is a medium speed, making the water not to fast so creatures can not survive, but not so slow that the water just sits, creating bad filtration for the water. The turbidity of the water was also very good, with the seeing distance of over 100 centimeters using the turbidity tube. All of those tests put together make the water quality result very good. The air temperature was 24.7 degrees celsius, and the water temperature was 23.8 degrees celsius. This shows us that the stream was quite shallow, because of how close the air and water temperature was, but still enough of a difference so it was not to warm for aquatic life. With algae being the only aquatic plant we found, and finding sedges, alsike clover, milkweed, red osier dogwood, and speckled alder on the shore, we can say that these plants did not impact the water quality to an extent of affecting the water quality that much, or even at all. The macroinvertebrates in the water; crayfish, mayflies, leech’s, and 3 different egg species, did not seem to affect the water quality too much, if at
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