Student Research Reports

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We belong to the Science Club at Ikuta High School in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Since 2016, we have been participating in GLOBE activities, conducting water quality surveys of a small river called Hirase River, which is located very close to our school, using the GLOBE Hydrology Protocol once a week. In this report, we analyzed the global trends of water-related data (i.e., water temperature, pH, nitrates, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen) collected from all around the world through GLOBE using a Python program. We also collected some environmental variables (i.e., urban areas around each GLOBE observation site and river width) and evaluated the relationships among the data of water qualities and the environmental variables. We found that the average water temperature has been rising year by year as global trend, indicating the effects of global warming. Last year, our cluster analysis revealed that the overall GLOBE observation sites were divided into three categories: (a) narrow rivers in a rich natural setting, (b) wide rivers in urban areas, and (c) narrow rivers in urban areas. We examined the factors affecting water qualities in these three types of rivers and clarified the characteristics of the Hirase River, which we are observing, in comparison to these three types of rivers. This year, we have further conducted separate analyses for rivers in natural settings and those in urban areas to deepen our investigation. As a new initiative this year, we conducted a biodiversity survey around the Hirase River—where we perform our water quality monitoring—by calling for participation from local residents and junior high school students. Since this investigation has only just begun, we have not yet collected a sufficient amount of data; however, an interim report is included in this paper.