A CLASSROOM DATA EVALUATION PROJECT REVEALS SOME POLLUTION TRENDS IN RIVERS IN SOUTHWEST OHIO: RESULTS FROM A DETAILED CLASSROOM EXERCISE

Rivers have always been key factors in society, therefore it is important to maintain the health and native biodiversity within them. To do so it is vital to understand the geochemistry of each river as well. It is not feasible to do broad scale analytical work of river chemistry in the classroom owing to analytical costs, field logistics, and time. However evaluation of large data bases may be pedagogically feasible. This study focuses on analyzing the elemental factors and relationships in Southwestern Ohio rivers. As a class project our team used Ohio government data provided in the Biological and Water Quality Study of Southwest Ohio River Tributaries, 2014 report to test relationships between elements found at the river locations. The study included evaluating concentrations of elements for 41 different stream locations and finding and explaining the relationships and correlations of concentrations of elements observed in these test locations. The relationships observed among elements that our team focused on include positive correlations in concentrations of iron and manganese, sodium and chlorine, as well as traces of herbicides, simazine, atrazine, and metolachlor. After calculating the p values of the elemental relationships it was determined that some of the observed relationships were statistically meaningful. The chemistry of rivers was consistent with the bedrock geology dominated by Ordovician and Silurian carbonates and the derived overlying Quaternary glacial material. Some probable explanations for observed trends include non-point source pollution from agricultural and industrial runoff, sodium chloride based road treatments and complex manganese and iron oxide mineralization. This classroom project shows that valuable information can be gained from meta-analysis of reports and such reports can be used for detailed environmental chemical training in the upper level college classroom.