Water Quality

2013

States: basically the same as last year...pretty straightforward. Also station format...they use pictures for the macroinvertebrates

Nationals: also very similar to last year, though they use preserved macroinvertebrate specimens. For this, it is VERY helpful to know the size of the macroinvertebrates. The cranefly specimens are crazy small. The other ones were not too hard, as long as you know the bugs well. Also tested on basic ecology (not too bad) and water quality testing. I think they give 3 minutes at each station, which was a problem last year, but not so much this year...just know what you are doing.

Both states and nationals asked questions regarding lake/estuary/ocean pH....so know that.

Generally, there weren't too many questions on estuary ecology, maybe 1-2 stations at both state/national

Salinometer needs work. This year we used a straw with clay wrapped in parafilm at the bottom. (the idea is to have a narrow tube at the top and a dense weight at the bottom....which makes the difference between increments bigger) Didn't test salinometer at nationals though because the station got messed up (yay!)

There is an epic cheet sheet for this event floating around somewhere!

2012 Ok so since the last one got deleted or didn't save...

Test Format: about 10-12 stations, 3-5 minutes each

-1/3 of stations on general ecology, aquatic ecosystems, nitrogen cycle, water cycle etc.

-1/3 of stations on macroinvertebrates

-1/3 of stations on testing water quality

-one station of salinometer somewhere in there

Macroinvertebrates:

-The packet on the soinc website has pretty much everything you need to know, life cycles, classification, sensitivity, diet... --> it may be helpful to put this on the cheat sheet to same time during fact recall

-know how to identify the bugs--ok that's obvious, but yeah, know them well--larvae/nymph and adult forms

-calculate PTI

-this part is pretty straight forward as long as you memorize the bugs. At states, they gave us mostly pictures of the bugs and one live specimen, so it wasn't hard. At nationals, they had perserved specimens for all of them which was more challenging because some of the samples were SMALL and unclear. They gave us a microscope and magnifying glass, but focusing the microscope and such takes time and we had 6 bugs to do in 3 minutes...so yeah time was a contraint.

Salinometer: We used a thermometer cover that we found in dempsey's drawer and covered the open end with clay as a weight, then covered the clay with parafilm to prevent weight change from water loss. We used a graduated cylinder to measure how high the salinometer floated...--> this part could have been more accurate.