RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group to GENESIS

2018-09-01T17:37:27Z

Hello from New York. My hope is that the summer went well with all of yol, sans-serif]u and that you are either well rested and/or exhausted and more knowledgeable from all of the activities you were involved with. Many people have been wondering where we should go from here regarding our attempt at putting together a global group to study water quality. My thought is to use the Scientific Method as we move forward. Step 1 would involve making OBSERVATIONS of the water in your area. Step 2 would involve coming up with a question (PROBLEM STATEMENT) derived from those observations (e.g. What effect is the landscape having on our water quality). Step 3 would involve researching (GATHERING INFORMATION) regarding the question (e.g. Is the land use in our area farmland, urban, suburban, paved, vegetated, etc.). Step 4 if forming a HYPOTHESIS. (Fertilizer from the surrounding land is increasing the nutrient content of the stream). Step 5: Experiment (TEST THE HYPOTHESES). Use GLOBE protocols to determine if your educated guess is correct. Step 6: ANALYZE THE RESULTS. (e.g. Results show an increase in nitrates after the area using fertilizers) Step 7: FORM A CONCLUSION (e.g. The increase in nitrates has affected the water quality - increase in algae growth). Step 8: COMMUNICATE YOUR RESULTS: Monthly webinars by the GENESIS groups to let the world know what we are up to.
Our hope is to start the webinars in September and go through until next May. If any of you would like to pick a month to present, feel free to to REPLY to one of Robert Connick's POSTS in the ENSO Phase III Community COLLABORATION FORUM click on the GENESIS Category then click on the GENESIS Thread or if that is too confusing, please just send me an email at connickr801@gmail.com. The months will be assigned on a first come - first serve basis. I will be working with all of you trying to find the best way to make this work. Please send me any ideas, thoughts, comments, concerns or questions you may have.
One last thing that I feel would make this important. Instead of just locating an issue with the water quality, I would hope that our groups would be taking steps on how they are working on improving the water quality and monitoring it to determine if their corrective measures are working. The idea is to IMPROVE the water quality, not just monitor it.
Since we are still receiving a lot of views on the Global Water Quality Collaboration Group thread, I will be sending this email out on that as well along with and email. I apologize if you receive this more than once. Eventually, I will only be using the GENESIS thread. Thanks again for your great work last year. Looking forward to working with you again this year.

RE: Important Update

2018-08-22T16:36:50Z

Hello. For those of you that have viewed or are viewing this thread, you need to read the third paragraph under "The ENSO Phase III Community" listed above. Thank you for your interest and our hope is that you will be able to join us in this endeavor to improve the water quality of our planet.

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-07-06T16:23:27Z

Just a quick note to wish everyone a great summer. I will be keeping in touch using the GENESIS link on this forum to keep you up on what is still being done. I am not exactly sure how it will go but will see what kind of interest we still have in September when school starts again. Enjoy the day. Robert (aka Bob)

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-05-24T16:44:51Z

What a great way to spend Earth Day! Thanks for posting this Dorian. It looks like you had some great people to work with and that they enjoyed their time in the stream. Hopefully they will take this enthusiam back to the classroom with them. The site also looked very pristine. Your macro collection of pollution sensitive bugs seemed to back this up.

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-05-23T21:02:58Z

I had the pleasure of taking 8 outdoor environmental educators from the Montgomery County Public Schools out to do a stream study at the Lathrop E Smith Outdoor Education Center in Rockville, MD on Earth Day! WE documented our hydrology site and named it the OEA North Branch Rock Creek hydrology site.

We were giving this a try for the first time, and weren't able to get the dissolved oxygen or the nitrate data as those tests were much more direction intensive that we had thought... But we did characterize many macroinvertibrates and found we have many pollution sensistive organisms, and we plan to return and collect data here at least four times a year- once per season.

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-05-18T19:27:31Z

Kudos to the Connecticut Kids for adding the site pictures to the Google Doc! Also, the Croatian Crew added more photos allowing better visualization of where they are testing! Go Genesis Group!!

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-05-18T03:15:06Z

Just a quick thank you to Jeff Bouwman (#gettingsciencedone), Akinwumiju Akinola (our representative in Nigeria), Marija Krajnik (and her great students), and Dorian Janney (our Maryland mermaid) for updating their information on the Google Doc that was sent out. This will make managing the data much easier (I hope). Special thanks goes to one of our senior members, Gary Popiolkowski, for being the first to send the picture of his water quality site. I didn't think about adding the pictures initially but when I put his picture in it made a great addition and others just kind of followed suit. So far so good. Also, I would like to change the name of our group to GENESIS (Global Environmental Network Evoking Science in Students). It is a lot easier to say "Genesis Group" than GWQCG. I hope you agree :-) This means that I will be in touch with Brian Campbell (NASA Ninja) to help me figure out how to make the necessary changes on GLOBE.

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-05-08T01:28:46Z

Hi from Florida, USA. I hope everyone is doing well and still excited to start working on collaboration with the Global Water Quality Collaboration Group. As of now, I have checked the GLOBE website using the Retrieve Data tool to look at the people and their schools who have expressed and interest in working in this group. So far, I have GLOBE sites with data for the following: Jeff B. from MIchigan, Gary P. from PA, Chris N. from CT, Scott R. (aka. Luigi M.) from NY and Marija K. from Croatia. If you were not listed in the previous group, I was unable to locate your site with data on GLOBE. Some of you may have sent me this information and if you did, I apologize if I could not find your site. If you could take the time to send me the school and site information (after you check it on the GLOBE website) we would truly appreciate it. We have a grant that can provide materials to certain schools in our group but I feel I will not be able to use the money if we do not have more schools in more countries with GLOBE sites to accomplish our goals. We are still hoping to get sites from Thailand, Nigeria, Finland, Texas, Maryland and any other schools/groups that might be interested. If you receive this email and are no longer interested in participating in this collaboration, please contact me and I will remove you from our list (no hard feelings). If there is something going on that will delay you from working with us, please let me know. If there is something I can do to assist you in any way, contact me and I will do my best to help. If you think you might know of another school that would be interested, please feel free to send me the name and link/email. Thank you for your cooperation and attention to this request. I am hoping we can accomplish great things together. Sincerely, Bob Connick (Genesis Project Manager)

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-05-02T20:06:31Z

Hello H20Group. As of now, we are in the process of getting supplies and equipment to our members who requested them. LACES has been very supportive in helping us with this. The one thing I would ask is that if you have not already contacted our group with your GLOBE school/organization name and the sites that you will be putting your data on, please do so. After my daughters graduation, I will be spending time looking over the schools and sites to try and figure out how best to use the data/information and make it available for others to use. I will be asking members of our group for input since we have a lot of talent and experience here. If you are having trouble collecting data or are not sure when and how often it needs to be done, touch base and we will do our best to work with you. Thanks. God bless. Bob

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-30T15:00:57Z

Hey Gary. Hope the weekend went well. Thank your kids for the data. Any chance they could set up this site on GLOBE as a Water Quality site?? Enjoy the day.

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-27T17:14:03Z

4/27/18
pH 5
nitrates 0-5 ppm
phosphates 1 ppm
temp. 13 degrees C
DO 4-8 ppm
turbidity 20 JTU
salinity 1 ppt

Our latest rainfall measured pH of 5

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-27T13:33:02Z

Hello to all. I would like to pass along some exciting news. Our Global Water Quality Collaboration Group applied for a grant from LACES to supply equipment and supplies to some of our members. Dixon Butler from LACES recently got back to me and told me that his organization accepted our proposal. Money from this grant will provide schools/organizations in Croatia, Nigeria and the United States with things like water quality test kits, a GPS and a weather station to help them collect the data we will be working with for our project. Thanks to all of the people who helped make this happen (especially Dorian who told me about LACES). Please keep doing your best to collect the data and putting it on the GLOBE website. As always, looking forward to working with you. Bob

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-24T11:16:57Z

Gary Popiolkowski
7th grade Science
Chartiers-Houston Jr./Sr. High School
Houston, PA, United States of America

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-23T19:28:14Z

Hi everybody! It's great to see the collaboration group growing. In Mahopac, we will be taking data three times a week for the next three weeks at the Pre-Pond (SWS-5) and Post-Pond (SWS-7) sites. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-23T18:26:43Z

Hey Chris. Not a problem with the data. We can wait until you guys get a chance to put it up on the GLOBE website. Looking forward to finding out what the "shout out" is all about.

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-23T16:30:01Z

So we have been a little slow in sharing out data but if you join the ENSO SODA Webinar we are going to try to include all of our data to date. We started in October collecting and added protocols and removed them as weather, time and school schedule permitted. We should even have some rough count macroinvert data as well, if we can get the samples we collected today processed by then.

Curiosity question - while all of our data is kept in google sheets, and not all has been uploaded to the GLOBE website, would you prefer us to share a link to the sheets or wait for the (longer) update to the GLOBE website? Or is there another option? Also our kids have a little shout out to Shumate, Medford and Mahopac included...tune in to find out why!

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-23T14:33:01Z

Got it done, just a little slower. You know what they say, speed doesn't matter, forward is forward!!

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-20T18:20:35Z

You are the man. After 2 pm on a Friday and still doing work. Needless to say I am very impressed. Not bad for an older gentleman :-)

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-20T18:17:22Z

April 20,2018
11:00 am
clear cloud cover
Turbidity 20 JTU
Phosphates 2 PPM
Nitrates 0 PPM
Water Temperature 9.8 degrees C
Surface Water Temperature 8.4 degrees C
Air Temperature 11.2 degrees C
DO 8 PPM
pH 6

RE: Global Water Quality Collaboration Group

2018-04-20T18:05:13Z

Hi Marija. I just worked with Islym at the GLOBE Help Desk and we tested to see if you are in the group. As you can see, you are. Congratulations Croatia and welcome to the group!!