WATER QUALITY IN PRISTINE STREAMS IN SOUTHEASTERN MISSOURI: ESTABLISHING A BASELINE

Most studies of water quality are performed to understand water degradation, usually from anthropogenic sources. Relatively few studies are performed in pristine watersheds, so establishment of baseline values for water quality in the absence of anthropogenic impact is difficult. However, having such a baseline is useful for assessing the extent of anthropogenic impact in other watersheds. In this study, common water quality parameters including temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, bacteria, nitrate, phosphate, and benthic macroinvertebrates were measured in five 12-digit watersheds in southeastern Missouri. These watersheds all had very low anthropogenic activity and had similar land use/land cover. Data were acquired during six sampling campaigns conducted over a two month period, and baseline water quality values were established. Additionally, statistical analyses were performed to determine if correlations between water quality parameters could be used to reduce the number of water quality measurements that need to be acquired. Correlations were found between dissolved oxygen and pH as well as between nitrate and electrical conductivity at the alpha = 0.05 significance level, and correlations between turbidity and pH and between nitrate and turbidity were found at the alpha = 0.01 significance level. A Kruskal Wallis nonparametric ANOVA test was performed with an alpha value of 0.05 and revealed that temperature, dissolved oxygen, E. Coli, and phosphate concentrations were statistically part of the same sampling population across all five watersheds. The research team intends to extend this study by comparing the results of this study with data collected from the current five watersheds as well as additional watersheds in Spring 2018.