May 4, 2008
Urban Scientists: Water Quality Testing at Black's Nook
During this Cambridge Science Festival program, the Friends group, the Cambridge Public Schools and the Water Department worked together with program participants to investigate the water quality of Black's Nook. Leaders demonstrated how to use a rake to collect aquatic plants (Barbara Strell, left photo, in blue), plankton nets to collect plankton samples (Squizzle Plekavich, second photo, holding net), field equipment to collect water chemistry data (Hannah Wilbur, third photo, kneeling), and a variety of nets and buckets to collect aquatic macroinvertebrate specimens (Susan Agger, fourth photo, in red) for observation. Indoors, we used hand lenses, microscopes, pond guides and dichotomous keys to identify the species that we collected: then we discussed how the information could be used as an indicator of the health of the environment.