York River Water Quality Curriculum: Using Real Water Quality Data to Investigate Water Quality Cycles and Answer Applied Marine Science Questions

Considering that Virginia has approximately 50,000 miles of rivers and streams, 2,500 square miles of estuarine water and 100 lakes greater than 100 acres, water quality monitoring with your students is a great hands-on activity that gets students thinking about the properties and processes occurring in classroom aquaria, lake, stream, river, estuarine and marine environments. It can be difficult to elucidate water quality patterns or trends with student generated data due to the low number of samples taken, the possibility of inaccurate results due to user error or expired test kit reagents as well as the innate lack of accuracy and precision associated with low-cost water quality test kits. These activities were designed to enable teachers to expand upon their water quality and Chesapeake Bay curricula and incorporate real-world data collected in the Chesapeake Bay to address biology, earth science, computer mathematics, chemistry, and probability and statistics Standards of Learning for the Commonwealth of Virginia (specific SOL’s are listed at the end of the Teachers Pages). The activities investigate applied marine science issues that deal with various living resources using water quality data gathered by the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Virginia (CBNERRVA) research and monitoring staff