Progress Report, 4/8/03

This topic submitted by The Asian, The Jew, The Mac, and The Ho (singsora@muohio.edu) on 4/9/03. Additions were last made on Wednesday, April 9, 2003. Section: Burt and Ernie

Today was a very progress oriented day for this project...

It began at 9am...
Noelle and Becky went and tested the water samples that had been taken the previous week. We tested them for nitrate and phosphate. After spending a good hour and a half doing this and realizing we had some crazy errors, we were informed by Hays that this data would not work because the samples were too old and the phosphate and nitrate levels could have been affected due to the presence of microorganisms in the water that may have absorbed it over a period of time. So, that sucked. And we have to do it again.

Noelle and Becky arrived back in Peabody at around 10:30am, to find Ms. Karen, in the archives, with the revolver (haha, like in Clue!... the revolver part is a joke...). She was researching Western Pond, however, we were disappointed to find that there was not much information available about the pond. We found some cool old images of it though...

We found the second picture to be interesting because if you notice, the boathouse entrance is still accessible. If you look at it now, it is underwater, which indicates the expansion of the pond over time. We learned that to look up the proper information about the pond's history we will have to go to Lane Public Library's archives, which is the game plan for Thursday. So, we were disappointed with our trip to the archives. Meanwhile, upstairs, vision's of sugarplums danced in Audrey's head...

Becky and Noelle then went BACK to Western pond to collect more water samples. We once again, took them from three strategic locations. One from where the water enters the pond, one in the body of the pond, and another from under the bridge where the water exits the pond.

Becky and Noelle then returned to Peabody, where Karen was building sediment traps and trying to figure out how to get the waders on. Meanwhile, Audrey had arisen from her slumber. Becky, Audrey, and Karen then proceeded to the pond to drop the three sediment traps.

One of the crazy swans even decided to peck at our traps after they were set...

After dropping the sediment traps, Becky then went back to Boyd Hall to test the newest batch of water samples. This data showed that there was a larger amount of phosphate going into the pond than there was in and exiting the pond. This indicates that the phosphate is getting used up in the pond. The nitrate readings indicate that there is a lot of nitrate in the pond, but not as much coming in or going out of the pond. This could be due to the swan feces containing nitrate and possibly algae absorbing the nitrate before it exits the pond.

Yay.

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