Research: Water Quality Monitoring
The testing of water quality is important because we actually don’t have a really good understanding of what ‘normal’ environmental conditions are in Puget Sound. We talk about it getting ‘worse’ but we need to know what water quality conditions regularly are before we can see if they are changing. Highline faculty and students are actively monitoring water quality in the community. The monitoring project is Highline’s way of raising public awareness of water quality issues influencing Puget Sound and the streams flowing into it. Water quality programs are integrated into many of our Highline classes now that the MaST Center allows students easy access to the water and monitoring equipment. The monitoring program has expanded to include students in Marine Biology, Oceanography, Environmental Science, and other related courses. This enables Highline to expose more than 400 students per year to direct hands-on activities relating to water quality. Data is gathered at least twice per week during the academic year. Our Marine Monitoring Program includes taking data from Poverty Bay in the Puget Sound at the Highline MaST Center. Stream monitoring sites include Des Moines Creek, McSorley Creek, and the Redondo outfall.
Puget Sound Data collected at the MaST Center includes:
- Water Temperature
- Salinity
- Conductivity
- pH
- Oxidation Reduction Potential
- Dissolved Oxygen
- Secchi Disk (vertical water visibility)
- Plankton Composition: common phytoplankton (centric diatoms vs. chain diatoms) and zooplankton
YSI Sonde Water Quality Monitoring Data 2006 (Excel)
Stream Data may include:
- Water Temperature
- pH
- Oxidation Reduction Potential
- Dissolved Oxygen
- Flow Rate
- Turbidity
- Dissolved Nutrients (Nitrogen, Phosphorous)
- Fecal Coliform (bacterial load)
- Toxicity Bioassays (determines water toxicity using water fleas (Daphnia sp.) as an indicator