Proctor Campus Pond Experiment - Site 6

The Pond

In class, I was assigned to assess an area in my school's campus, and collect relevant data. After being put into a group of three, we set out to investigate this site and bring back any information we found. It was October 21st, around 9:40 AM. The whole school was damp after a long rain, the air was the slightly uncomfortable temperature of 12 degrees celsius. We were lucky enough to be assigned to site 6, a small stream where water would exit the pond, close to Mac House. After tiptoeing past poison ivy, carefully hopping around mud, and trudging through a forest of dead leaves, we arrived at our site - the small stream coming from the Proctor pond that quickly joined with another stream from unknown origins. We decided that to collect quality data, we had to investigate the part of the stream that directly came from the pond; to acquire research from the streams after the two conjoined would skew our data.

pH reading

Phosphate reading

The water had a temperature of 11.1 degrees celsius. This is likely due to the fact that the air was also around the same temperature and it was morning. As shown to the right, the pH of the stream is in between 6 - 7. Our teacher, Alan MacIntyre, stated that organisms enjoyed living in a 6 -7 -8 pH range, making this water habitable. This barely acidic pH is expected, due to somewhat polluted rainfall from urban areas such as Boston. However, the water is neutral enough to properly harbor life. The phosphate indicator showed that the phosphate level of the site was between 0 - 1 units. This is often related to the pH level, as phosphates tend to correlate with acidity. Lastly, the turbidity of the site was between 0 - 20 units. This data shows that the water is quite clean and rather devoid of many substances floating in the water. This is probably due to the fact of the relative cleanliness of the pond and that the stream was full of moving water. Our main goal according to Alan MacIntyre was "assessing the pond's health", and according to this data, we can make the conclusion that this pond and stream are quite healthy.

We also scanned the area for any abiotic or biotic data. Alan asked us to search for any benthic organisms that "live at the bottom of the water body". We found many dead leaves, sticks, pebbles, rocks, mud and water. The stream was mostly clean despite a few clumps of dead and rotting leaves that managed to find their ways into the water. It appeared that the site lacked in ay benthic organisms. Our group attempted many times in vain to find any fauna in the stream, until my partner found a rat-tailed maggot. We found that this type of maggot is the offspring of a drone fly, and uses a snorkel like organ to acquire oxygen whilst floating in water. The group found that this organism usually resides in oxygen-deprived water with high organic content. thus leading to the assumption that this pond and stream are deprived of oxygen yet full of life.

Alan having to resort to simple terms to communicate with a helpless student

My personal thoughts regarding this investigation is that it was an enlightening experience. I believe that my group had the privilege of looking into an area that was so different from the rest of the sites. Whereas the other five were placed around the pond itself, our site was removed from the area, and was quite part of the pond. The site was placed between trees, making it darker, and the stream was much more shallow than the pond at Proctor. I was happy to acquire data from this site because I believed that it would be so different from the others. In the end, we found that this site was healthy, and an adequate location for life, and though we only had one day to acquire data - as supposed to the other groups that had two days - I believe that we performed our tasks well and it sufficient enough that we had quality data to report on.

:)     :)     :)     :)     :)     :)     :)