ESTABLISHING A BASELINE OF STREAM CHARACTERISTICS IN INDIANA COUNTY, PA: LEVERAGING COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS

Indiana county is located in Western Pennsylvania and is part of the Allegheny Plateau. Almost all of the waterways are headwater streams of the Allegheny River where water quality has been significantly impacted by resource extraction for decades. The Evergreen Conservancy nonprofit organization (based in Indiana, PA) has been focused on the water quality in Indiana County since the founding in 2003, which led to the installation and maintenance of stream data loggers starting in 2011. These locations have been monitored for a variety of stream characteristics that consists of water temperature (celcius), water level (meters), conductivity (microsiemens, converted to TDS in mg/L). Over the past 12 years they have monitored critical water characteristics in 40+ locations in Indiana County with in-stream data loggers to address and look for evidence of pollution and specific water quality degradation events. This data set has been underutilized and we have started working on leveraging it as well as working with the network of knowledgeable volunteers of the Evergreen Conservancy to guide us in future steps of our research that works to improve the overall health of the streams that reside in Indiana County. As of now, our first step in analyzing and monitoring this data is to assess the quality and quantity of the data and to develop automation of this with python coding. We have started from square one to learn python coding to automate data processing and utilization and have created graphs and other visuals to start our process of correlations and pattern recognition in our data for future research. Preliminary findings show typical seasonal temperature changes for cold water streams (average summer temperatures of <19C) at all seven stream locations we have analyzed so far. We also see little to no change throughout the year in overall average water volume, as would be expected in this region (steady rainfall year round). As well, we find that some of the streams show increased TDS values in the winter months, which seem to indicate possible road salt impacts. Additionally, we see that the daytime temperature ranges are greatest during the month of April. Further studies will expand these analyses to all 40 locations throughout Indiana County to develop a baseline understanding of these headwater streams.