Service Learning Event

Monitoring the Quality of Water at Japanese Gulch 3-5-17

by Marisa Kemper

The service learning event I am choosing to write about was a Water Treatment Monitoring event which, in this case, took place at Japanese Gulch. A group of students and our leader drove to Japanese Gulch in order to learn about the history of the place (apparently it was a Japanese mill), the local flora (there's this stuff called licorice moss that's suppose to taste like licorice but no one was brave enough to try it), and to (most importantly) run some diagnostic tests to check for different properties of the local water. Apparently the water from the Japanese gulch is used by salmon to spawn every year, and the purpose of our monitoring is to make sure that none of the local developments are affecting it in a way that could impact the salmon's development and mating. I picked this project because an animal is very much affected by its environment. We learned in this course that nature itself shapes the course of an animal's evolutionary history with forces like natural selection or random forces of genetic drift. So I wanted to take this opportunity to see what kinds of tools we can use to determine if an environment is being negatively affected.

The weather was not ideal for this event -- it went from cloudy to rainy to hail and just generally really cold. The last thing on my mind was to photograph anything because we spent nearly the entire time learning and participating. While I do not have photo documentation of what we did there or the area, I do have the event e-mail and organizer's name and most certainly wrote down on a form that I was doing this for BIOL&212 so the organizer can definitely verify that I went. The leader was Kacie McCarty and her e-mail is kacie.mccarty@edmail.edcc.

After a short one mile hike we got to the stream that we would monitor. There Kacie handed each of us a procedure. We went through it and learned about what tests we would run, making sure that everyone knew what all the terminology meant. The tests we ran checked for the presence of E.Coli, pH, hardness, turbidity, oxygen levels, alkalinity, and temperature. We had to note the weather and the air temperature, not just the water temperature. We each were assigned a different part of the procedure to read, and became the team leader when it was our turn to read. This meant guiding whomever was running the test through the procedure. We all participated in observations, conversing about results. I was team leader during the pH test and also helped pipette water on the petri dishes that would be used for the E. Coli test (we had a total of four petri dishes). While I knew what most of the terminology meant (pH, alkalinity, hardness, etc.) I didn't know how to test for all of them. That was one of the major things I learned.

The turbidity test was actually really interesting. What you do is take two graduated cylinders and fill one with your sample and another with clear distilled water. At the bottom of each cylinder is a black dot. Then, you compare how blurry the dot looks in each sample. Obviously the distilled water one is completely clear so you see the dot easily. If your sample is not at all turbid then it will also be clear but if its fuzzy you have to determine just HOW fuzzy it is. So you add a precise amount from a stock solution that is supposed to be the first "level" of turbidity which for us was 5 JTU (apparently there's tons of different turbidity units which is curious in and of itself) into your clear distilled water sample. You compare the fuzzinesses and if they look like the same level of fuzzy then you know your sample is 5 JTU. But if your sample is STILL more blurry than the water then you add another precise quantity to take it to 10 JTU. You do this until you can say how many JTU your sample has.

What this experience taught me is that sometimes science can be a canary in the coal mines. I often think of science as this field that's just out to be innovative and create new technologies and try to explain strange phenomenon. This was a really important experience because it bridged all the gen. chem. that I did in class or the biology techniques that I learned in microbiology or the things I've learned about animals in our class to the world outside the classroom, outside the lab. These tests that we did gave data that might be used in the Salmon Monitoring project -- what we did could help influence policy or help us understand trends in our local fish populations. It was a humbling reminder that what I do at school is to eventually help the people and organisms around me to live a better life. And I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true. I really understand the importance of volunteering science in the community because data about our environments can help explain how we affect local wildlife.

We learned in class about how animals regulate their internal environments when they're up against a changing environment. So the tests we did let us know how people or climate or local changes in industry (Boeing is really close to Japanese gulch and Kacie told us there is a new facility -- I forget the company who's building it-- being built near one of the gulches so these service learning events will be really important in the months to come) challenge animal's attempts at homeostasis.

Here are some questions that I had while on this event:

1. Why do we only test for E. Coli and not just coliforms in general? When I took microbiology we had this type of agar called Violet Red Bile Agar. Whenever a coliform grows on it they take on this very metallic green sheen. I suggest this because it's not just E. Coli that can get people and animals sick but coliforms in general. At the event we used what I assumed was regular TSA and that'll just grow anything.

2. What other kinds of environments can we do testing on? Water is accessible and a big environment but it's not the only environment out there and I was curious if there's other types of tests that are doable on say, the soil to check the composition and see if its suitable for plants or microorganisms. Is there a way to test forests? I guess that's an odd question but it made me wonder.

3. How much data is needed before there is a serious change in policy or community behavior? I wondered if we got some serious red flags how quick would we be able to respond? I don't really understand the legal and political side to these matters so that's something I was curious about.

4. Are our results being used for something other than the monitoring of salmon? That's not something that was really talked about and now that I have chewed more on the matter I wonder what other important organisms are affected by these particular local bodies of water.

I am very glad I attended this event and will probably continue to help with the project and maybe ask some of these questions next time.