Wetlands Food Chains
This series of 4 activities engages students in thinking about how energy and pollution
move through ecosystems, how human interactions can affect food chains, and how The
Wetlands is helping to clean-up pollution that could get into local food chains. These
concepts are part of the VA SOL’s for most grade levels, and each of the activities can be
easily adapted for different ages.
A great way to wrap up this lesson might be to tie-dye with AMD. This way, students see
how food webs work, how pollution affects food webs, what pollution in The Wetlands is
like, and then how pollution like AMD can be cleaned up and used as something positive. To
tie-dye with AMD, spoon a bunch of AMD sediment into a bucket with some hot water (add
AMD until the water is nice and dark). Tie up your tie-dye shirts and let them soak in the
water for at least 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to dissolve or mix up the sediment
(there can be chunk of sediment—it makes some cool patterns on the shirts). Transfer to a
bucket of warm water with some baking soda in it and let soak for another 5 or so minutes.
Rinse and wash separately.
In this document:
Write-ups for lessons, worksheet for water testing, suggested follow-up activities, and
Critter Cards template
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Critter Cards and their Relationships:
Red Oak tree: Leaves, blossoms, and acorns provide food for bugs and mammals
Dogwood tree: Leaves, flowers, and berries provide food for bugs, birds, mammals
Arrow Arum: food for bugs
Cattail: food for bugs, birds, small mammals
Milkweed: food for bugs, particularly Monarch larvae
Hemlock tree: cones provide food for birds, bugs, small mammals
Monarch butterfly: feeds on Milkweed, other flowers; eaten by
Mayfly: herbivore that mainly feeds on aquatic plants; eaten by birds, frogs, snakes, small mammals
Grasshopper: herbivore that eats mostly grasses and sedges, but could eat plants found in wetlands
Frog: carnivore that will eat bugs
Snake: carnivore that will eat small mammals, bugs, amphibians
Deer: herbivore that will eat nuts, buds, berries, twigs, leaves
Squirrel: omnivore that eats nuts, fruits, seeds, and bugs
Fox: omnivore that especially likes grasshoppers but eats berries, frogs, other bugs and small mammals
Great Blue Herron: eats bugs, frogs, snakes, plant material
Great Horned Owl: carnivore that will prey on all the other animals in this food web
Food Chains in a Community
Materials: Plant and animal ID cards, 2 buckets, ping-pong balls (or marbles, or anything else that would
work), small area for running
Set up: Students will need a small area in which to run (probably at least a 30x30ft space, but not too
large or you might lose them!). Each student will either be a plant, animal, or the sun for this game. The
sun holds the bucket of “energy” (ping pong balls or marbles) and stands in the middle of the area for
the entire game. The leaders may want to be the sun so that students can run around.
Focus Discussion: Lots of plants and animals live around The Wetlands. What kind of animals do you
think live here? What do you think they need to survive? All animals need at least 5 resources to survive:
air, water, space, shelter, and food. Why do animals need to eat? To get energy to survive! What do you
think some of the animals you mentioned like to eat? Some eat plants, some eat other animals. Plants
and animals have lots of interactions in habitats—getting and providing food is one way they interact..
We’re going to pretend to be some of these plants and animals right now.
How to Play:
Hand out a “critter card” to each student and have them put it around their necks so they don’t forget
who they are. Before starting the game, you can go over who each student is and ask what they might
eat. Bring out the bucket of energy and give it to the sun. Ask: Why does the sun have all the energy?
Because everything else gets its energy from the sun. Have the sun give each plant 4 units of energy (4
ping pong balls) to start the game. How do plants get energy from the sun? They do photosynthesis. How
does that energy get passed on to animals? They eat the plants! Next, explain the rules of the game. All
the animals want to eat the plants to get energy. When we start the game, everybody runs around. The
animals tag the plants and other animals to get energy. When you get tagged, you have to give 2 energy
units to the person who caught you. If you’re the person getting those energy units, though, you only
get to keep one. The other one goes back into the “Used up energy” bucket. Once a plant runs out of
energy, it can go back to the sun and get 4 more energy units. Why can’t animals get energy directly
from the sun? Animals (most of them) don’t do photosynthesis, so they have to get energy from the
plants. At the end of the game, any animals that don’t have any energy are considered dead, so keep
hunting or eating plants until the game stops.
To start the game, place the sun in the middle of the playing area, have the plants scatter around the
sun, and the animals scatter around the very edge of the playing area. Ready, set, go, and let the kids
run and chase for a while! After about 5 minutes or so, or until kids start to slow down, start a
countdown from 10 and end the game. Everybody should freeze when you hit zero.
Discussion and wrap-up: We have just illustrated an important interaction between plants and animals
and the sun in ecosystems. What do we call the flow of energy through habitats? Food web! Where
does all the energy come from in a food web? All you animals had to give up some energy once you got
it—how is energy used up? We use energy to live—we need it to run around, to digest food, to keep all
of our organs functioning. What’s at the bottom of the food chain? Are plants producers or consumers?
What about the animals—producers or consumers? Why can’t animals be producers? They can’t do
photosynthesis! What do we call the animals that only eat plants? Have all the herbivores raise their
hands. What do we call animals that eat plants and animals? What are animals that only eat meat?
To further illustrate connections in food webs, have all the animals that have no energy units sit down.
These animals are now dead: how will this affect the rest of the animals? How will this affect the plant
community (will be different depending on how many dead animals are herbivores or omnivores)? Have
them stand back up. Now have half of the plants sit down (maybe say that the trees have been cut
down). How will this affect the others? What would happen if all the hawks were gone? The other
animals would survive more, maybe overpopulate and eat too many plants.
How that you’ve seen how a food web works, why do you think it’s important to protect all these
connections?
Estimated Time: 20 minutes
Water Pollution and Wetlands
Materials: Post-it notes (or anything you can stick on students), ropes or anything else to mark
boundaries
Set-up: Create a mini-watershed using ropes or something to mark boundaries. At one end, make the
Guest River. Leading into that, mark out The Wetlands (a path leading into the river) on one end of the
river and a storm drain on the other (use chairs, traffic cones, or anything else available to distinguish
that from The Wetlands). Leading into The Wetlands and the storm drain, mark off an open circle or
something that could represent that campus or the town of Wise, or the students’ school or
neighborhood. This is the space they will run around in.
Running Space (neighborhood)
Students will either be raindrops or wetlands plants. Station
leader and any chaperones will stand around in the running
space and add pollution to the water. Wetlands plants will line
the edge of The Wetlands and “clean” the raindrops as they go
towards the river
Focus Discussion: Let’s go back to the 5 things that animals
Drain
need to survive: what are they again? Air, water, space, shelter,
Wetlands
and food. We saw how animals get food. Now we’re going to
Creek
talk about water. Plants also need water. What are some
Guest River
sources of water for plants and animals? Rivers, lakes, rain.
When it rains, what happens to the water? It falls to the ground and either gets soaked in or runs to
storm drains or creeks. And where does it go to eventually? Here, all water drains into the Guest River,
which makes its way to the Clinch River and eventually to the Mississippi and out to the Gulf of Mexico.
We’re going to simulate what happens to water when it rains!
Demonstration:
Describe the set-up to the students, with the Guest River, the storm drains and The Wetlands leading
into it. Take 4 or so students as volunteers to be plants in The Wetlands and line them along the edge of
The Wetlands area marked off. Ask: What parts do plants have? Leaves, stem, flowers, roots. Have these
students turn their arms into roots! What do roots do for plants? Suck up water and nutrients! without
letting the rest of the class hear, tell the ‘plants” that they will use their “roots” to collect all the
pollution off of them raindrops as they go by (pull off as many sticky notes as they can). Tell the other
students that they are now rain drops, flowing along in the neighborhood (or campus, or school, or
whatever you want to call it). Now, raindrops are “sticky”—they like to stick to each other. So, the
raindrops are going to form lines of rain that runs through the neighborhood (have them line-up in 2
conga lines, holding on to each others’ shoulders). Place the teachers or other chaperones, or anyone
else available in places around the neighborhood and give them sticky notes. Instruct them to stick the
sticky-notes to students as they go by, explaining that since rain is sticky, it also likes to pick up anything
else it comes in contact with. What sorts of things might rain pick up as it flows through a
neighborhood? There are obvious things like trash and dirt, but also pesticides, herbicides, soap from
car washes, and any other chemicals on the ground.
When everyone is in their positions, start the demonstration! Let students run around in their conga
lines for a couple of minutes, making sure they all at least get one sticky note on them. Then announce
that the raindrops have made their way through the neighborhood, and its time for them to flow
downhill into the river. Have one line go through the storm drain and one line go through The Wetlands.
Encourage the raindrops to get to the river as quick as they can since they’re flowing downhill. Once
everyone is in the river, have them take a look at each other.
Discussion: What does the water quality look like in our river right now? It’s kind of polluted because it
picked up everything from the neighborhood. How does the water coming through the storm drain
compare to the water coming through The Wetlands? The Wetlands water is cleaner. How did it get
clean? The plants soaked up the pollutants with their roots. So, what’s the benefit of having wetlands
and other plants near water? It helps to filter water running off into creeks and rivers. What could this
neighborhood do to help clean more of the water that goes into the river? For this question, get them to
think about planting more plants, but also changing behavior so there’s not as much pollution that can
be picked up.
There’s another type of pollution that gets into the Guest River, but it doesn’t get there from our yards
and streets—it comes right from the creeks. The orange Abandoned Mine Drainage that we see here at
The Wetlands is also pollution. The metals that are dissolved in the water or sitting on the creek bed
aren’t very good for critters or for us. Now that you know about wetlands, why do you think this wetland
was built here on campus? To help clean up the water before going into the Guest River! In the next
activity, we’ll look more at what happens after the plants soak up the pollution.
Depending on how much time you have, you can ask more questions about how we can keep pollutants
from getting into the water, or you can re-do the demonstration with 2 wetlands, or with just a couple
of plants scattered around in the neighborhood and no wetlands. Ask students how they think the water
quality will change each time and then talk about what they noticed after the demonstration is over.
Estimated Time: 15 minutes (or more if you do multiple demonstrations)
Bioaccumulation: Human interactions in ecosystems
Materials: plant and animal ID cards, bandanas or pieces of cloth
Set-up: Kids just need a place to sit and build a pyramid (not actually climbing on top of each other,
though, unless they need some excitement!). This activity will work best if you don’t use the deer,
squirrel, fox, and Great Blue Herron. These would just complicate the pyramid. Without these you can
have the first row be all plants, the second row just be herbivores (the bugs), the 3rd row be the snake
and frog, and the top predator is of course the owl.
Focus Discussion: We know now how energy moves through a food web. And we saw how every time
animals gain energy from plants, they also lose energy in everyday life processes. Scientists have figured
out that only about 10% of the energy gained gets passed on to the next level of the food chain. That
means that if we had 1,000 plants, they provide enough energy to support 100 herbivores. Those 100
herbivores would give enough energy for 10 predators to survive. And only one top predator, like the
hawk could find enough energy to survive in that habitat of 1,000 plants. If students are familiar with
fractions already, have them calculate 10% of 1,000, 100, and 10.
Background information: (Don’t tell student this beforehand, since they’ll be seeing how it happens) In
addition to passing along energy in food chains, animals also pass along pollutants. Thinking back to
what you learned in the last activity, how do you think pollution like chemicals and metals, like this
orange iron, can get into the food chain? If there’s pollution in the water, that can get soaked up by
plants and then eaten by animals. What kind of pollutants do you think might plants and animals be
exposed to here? Fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals are common, but a big one at The Wetlands
is the iron sediment.
Demonstration:
Shuffle the plant and animal ID cards and pass them out again. Depending on how many students are in
the group, you may not use all the plants and animals: just make sure you have a relatively realistic ratio
of producers and each level of consumers. Ask all the plants to sit in a line. Next, ask all the primary
consumers (herbivores) to kneel behind them. Next, the secondary consumers (predators) line up
behind them, and finally the top predator stands behind that row. Now we’ve created a pyramid of life,
with all the trophic levels represented!
The plants are living in The Wetlands and soaking up the water and minerals from the water. Among
these other things in the water is high iron levels, which we can see in the orange sediment. This iron
can get into the plant tissues, as plants drink and use the water and take nutrients from it.
To represent this taking in of iron, lay a bandana on top of each of the plants’ heads.
Now the primary consumers, the herbivores, are getting hungry! Tell the herbivores to eat the plants by
taking the bandana off the head of a plant and placing it on their own head. Have them keep eating until
all the plants are gone (some herbivores will eat more than one plant).
Now the predators are getting hungry! Have the predators eat up all the herbivores by putting the
bandanas on their own heads. When they eat an herbivore, they have to take all the bandanas that are
on herbivore’s head.
What’s happening to the amount of iron in each of the animals now? The predators have more iron than
all the previous levels.
Now it’s time for the top predator to eat! The top predator should eat all the other predators, taking all
the bandanas.
How is this affecting the top predator? Where do humans fit in this food chain? How do you think this
affects us? What can we do to help keep harmful chemicals out of food chains?
Estimated Time: 20 minutes (if students answer lab questions during this time)
Wetlands Water Testing
*A couple leaders will be useful in this activity to help students do the tests.
*CAUTION: There may be poison ivy near some of the testing sites—keep your eyes out for it!
Materials: LaMotte Low Cost Monitoring Kit (we’ll use the N, P, DO, and pH tests—the others can be
removed from the bucket), LaMotte Iron test kit
Set-up: No set-up needed, but leaders need to be familiar with the testing sites and be ready to guide
students to the sites
Focus Discussion: We’re going to be testing the water in The Wetlands for a couple of different things
that will help us to see the health of the water. Why do you think it’s important to monitor what’s going
on in the water here? We can see changes over time (catch new sources of pollution maybe) and
monitor how well the wetlands are functioning as a treatment for the AMD! We can also get an idea of
what types of chemicals the plants might be soaking up with their roots and what threats there might be
for the animals living in the water.
Procedure: Have students get together with a partner and hand each set of partners a Low Cost
Monitoring Kit. Some groups may need one person to suit up in waders. After everyone is ready, tell
them that they’ll be going to different sites along The Wetlands to take water samples. The first thing
they should do when they get there is to take a few minutes to write down observations of their site.
What are some things you might want to write down about your site? Student should note what the
water is like, whether it’s moving or not, what the plant life is like in their site, if there is any AMD that
they can see, etc. Why is it important to make observations? This will help us to make some guesses
about what may cause some differences in water quality or just to get an idea of what is going on at that
site. Tell students that after they make observations, they’ll take the temperature of the water
(demonstrate the process) and then fill the bucket up with water from their site, trying just to get water
and not any mud. Once they get their sample, have them come back to a central gathering point to do
the tests. When everyone is ready, send groups to testing sites with their Monitoring Kit and lab
notebook.
Depending on how many groups there are, you can send more than one group to each site. This will also
give you a chance to talk about repetition in testing and about any discrepancies in results. A leader,
teacher, or chaperone can go to each site with groups if enough adults are available; otherwise, you can
lead the whole group along The Wetlands while you drop partners off at their sites.
Students have the test directions in the data handout sheet, so you can let them go through the tests on
their own, following the directions, or you can do them as a whole group.
Here’s an idea of how a conversation might go when telling students about all the tests:
1. Go to site and take the temperature by just holding the bucket under water for a minute in the
middle of the water column. Why do we want to take the temperature in the middle of the
water column? It’s hotter on the surface, colder at the bottom.
2. Fill the bucket up with water from your site, trying not to take the sample from a place that
you’ve been walking in. How could taking a sample in a place that’s been stirred up affect the
quality of your test results? When we walk around in the ponds, we stir up sediment. If we
collect that sediment in our bucket, we’ll have an inaccurate idea of the turbidity of the water.
3. Fill up the little glass tube for the Dissolved oxygen test right away. Why are we testing DO as
soon as we get the sample?
Scaffolding questions: What will happen to the amount of DO in the sample over time if there
are creatures living in it? What will happen to the DO if it sits exposed to the atmosphere? Do
will escape out into the atmosphere and get used up by creatures if it sits in an isolated
container (oxygen will also diffuse back into the sample from the atmosphere, but it’s best to do
the test right away)
Why does it matter how much oxygen is in the water? It determines how much life the stream
can support! Can give an indicator of what’s going on in terms of temperature, decomposition,
and biological activity in water. How would we expect the DO to change throughout the year?
DO changes with temperature—higher T=lower DO—so the % saturation will change through
the seasons.
4. Look down into the bucket to measure turbidity. Why is it important to measure turbidity? It’s a
measure of the sedimentation in the water—too much sediment can clog gills and hinder sight,
and it’s a sign of erosion upstream.
Scaffolding questions: What happens to the clarity of the water when there’s lots of sediment in
it? How would murky water affect the ability of a predator to find its prey? What could happen
to fish and organisms with gills who are breathing in particles of dirt with their water? How
would a clear pond and a murky pond differ in the amount of sunlight that reaches the bottom of
the pond? How would that affect plant growth? What affects would that then have on animal
life?
5. Nitrogen and phosphate: There usually isn’t much nitrate or phosphate in the Wetlands, even
down in the lake, so this is an easy test to skip for lack of time. Or you could do it and talk about
why there might not be much measured (campus doesn’t use fertilizers maybe, it’s all used up
by the plants in the lake, etc.)
How would nitrates and phosphates get in the stream? Many students might think these are
produced by the plants and put into the stream (which I guess is kind of true with decomposing
organisms or nitrogen fixing), and they also will probably think that having N and P in the stream
is necessary because they’re nutrients. That’s also true, but get them to think about what
happens when there’s too much of these nutrients. Excess nutrients get into the stream from
fertilizers and livestock (wastes) in the stream.
Scaffolding questions: What are the main ingredients in fertilizer? N, P, K. And what happens to
those nutrients when it rains? Some soak into the ground, but most run off into the streams b/c
of lack of roots to hold things in place and lack of ground cover.
What can happen if there are too many nutrients in the stream? Eutrophication! Let the
students talk through how nutrients cause things to grow, but too much can overcrowd, then
things die and oxygen is used up.
6. Students may not really understand what pH is, so you can go over that. Why could having too
high or too low a pH be harmful? Organisms are adapted to function in certain pH ranges, so
changes can make it hard for them to survive.
After all the tests are done, compile results together. You can do this on a big white board, chalkboard
or notepad if available. Another option is to have groups line up with sites near the start of The
Wetlands on one end and going down to the lake on the other end. This way, students can compare
colors of test tubes or results and be able to visualize where the water was coming from better. As they
share results, students can describe their sites, or other groups can guess what their site looks like based
on their test results (iron and turbidity mainly). Or you can give them the map so they know the sites.
Discussion: This part is flexible! Be creative and try to chase down curious things about their results.
Possible things to talk about:
How do the values of _____ change as you go from the first pond down to the lake? What could be the
implication of that?
What can we say about the pond function based on the iron tests?
What evidence do we have that The Wetlands are doing their job?
How confident are we in our test results? What could we do to become more confident? Talk about doing
more tests, the value in having more data, that fact that there are always unknown things affecting
results, having to choose a color to go with a value when the color in the test tube might not exactly
match.
Compare values (i.e., a pH of 7 and 6.5): How different are these values? How confident are you in saying
that these are different?
How can we account for groups getting different results at the same site?
How do you think these results might be different in the summer/spring/fall/winter? Why do you think
that?
Wrap-up: So, what is this orange sediment we see? And what’s happening to it as it flows through The
Wetlands? If it wasn’t getting soaked up by plants or settled out in the ponds, where would it eventually
end up? To the Guest River, the Clinch, the Tennessee and eventually to the Mississippi and the Gulf of
Mexico. How have humans impacted this ecosystem? From mining, we created the AMD. We also
changed the forest habitat. All of our impact isn’t bad though, since we’re doing what we can to clean
up and restore the water now. Why is it important to clean up this sediment and other pollutants?
Students learned in the earlier activities that pollutants can build up in plants, then get into the food
chain and build up in higher amounts in predators, including us. This sediment also clogs up habitat and
makes the water murky, and can change the pH making it hard for some species to live here.
Estimated Time: About an hour
This picture is actually missing a pond. The pond shown here with sample sites 7 and 8 is the pond
before the pond with the bridge (with a rock circle in front of it)/ You can access sites 7 and 8 by going
through the rock circle. The AMD seep shown there is actually at the next pond, right behind Martha
Randolph. It’s hard to get into that pond to sample, but it can be done if you want students to try it.
SITE #_______
Follow the directions for each test, record your data, and answer all the questions as you work through
the tests and talk through things as a class.
IMPORTANT: After testing do NOT dump your samples back in the water.
1.
Why not empty the test tubes back into the water?
Temperature: What can knowing the temperature of the water tell us?
1) Remove the lid and contents from your sampling container.
2) Hold the empty bucket halfway below the surface and the bottom of the wetland, and wait
60 seconds.
3) Read the temperature as the number in green on the black strip, and record it below:
Temperature: ________°C
Dissolved Oxygen: Why is this important to measure?
1) Fill the small tube with water.
2) Add TWO dissolved oxygen tablets to the tube. Screw on the cap, and make sure there are
no air bubbles in the tube.
3) Mix the tube by shaking it until the tablets are completely dissolved. This will take a while.
4) Wait 5 more minutes after the tablets are dissolved. (You may work on other tests while
waiting.)
5) Compare the color of the sample to the chart on your card, and record your dissolved
oxygen level below:
Dissolved Oxygen:_____________ppm
Turbidity: What does this measure? Why is having a high turbidity dangerous?
1) Fill the bucket up to the test fill line (Located outside on the right side of the label).
2) Look for the black and white secchi disk icon on the bottom of the bucket.
3) Compare the appearance of the secchi disk icon to the chart on your card, and record your
turbidity below:
Turbidity:______________JTUs
Nitrate: Name a source of Nitrogen in the water. What can happen if there is too much Nitrogen?
1)
2)
3)
4)
Fill a plastic square test tube to 5 mL line.
Add ONE nitrate tablet, cap, and mix until table has disintegrated.
Wait 5 minutes for color to develop.
Compare color to the chart on your card, and record you nitrate level below:
Nitrate: ____________________ppm
Phosphate: Name a source of phosphorus in a watershed:
1)
2)
3)
4)
Fill another plastic square test tube to the 10mL line.
Add ONE Phosphorus tablet, cap, and mix until disintegrated.
Wait five minutes for color to develop.
Compare the color to the chart on your card, and record below:
Phosphate:_________________ppm
pH: This is a measurement of how acidic or basic the water is; ranges from 0 (very acidic) to 14 (very
basic), with 7 being neutral; natural water is about 6.5 to 8.2. What can happen if the pH is too basic or
too acidic?
1) Fill another Square tube to the 10 mL line.
2) Add ONE pH Tablet, cap, and mix until the table has disintegrated.
3) Compare the color to the chart on your card, and record your pH levels below:
pH: _________________
Iron: This is one of the main metals in the orange precipitate of the Abandoned Mine Drainage seeping
from old mine sites on campus and around SW Virginia. How can heavy metals like iron get into the food
chain, and why can that be dangerous?
Use the contents of the blue container.
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
Fill the test tube to the 5 mL line (Code 0230)
Add 5 drops of Iron Reagent #1, cap, and mix.
Using the white plastic spoon, add 0.05 g of the Iron Reagent # 2 powder to the mixture.
Cap, mix, and wait 3 minutes.
Put the tube in the black Iron Comparator, match the sample to a color, and record your
iron level below:
Iron: ____________ppm
Data:
1) Record the data from other groups in the following table. Then calculate the % O2 Saturation using
the dissolved Oxygen table below:
Sample
Site
Temp.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
DO
% O2
Saturation
Use this chart to determine % Saturation:
Dissolved Oxygen
Temp C 0 ppm 4 ppm 8 ppm
2
0
29
58
4
0
31
61
6
0
32
64
8
0
34
68
10
0
35
71
12
0
37
74
14
0
39
78
16
0
41
81
18
0
42
84
20
0
44
88
22
0
46
92
24
0
48
95
26
0
49
99
28
0
51
102
30
0
53
106
Turbidity
Nitrate
Phos.
pH
Iron
2) How do temperature, %O2 saturation,
turbidity, nitrate, pH, and iron levels change
throughout the wetland? Which values
change more than others?
3) Graph the levels of Iron at each sampling station below (be sure to fill in the numbers on the axes).
Questions:
1) What is Abandoned Mine Drainage?
2) Aside from being a beautiful space on campus, what is the purpose of The Wetlands?
3) How well is The Wetlands working? Use evidence from our tests to support your claim.
4) What is the benefit of testing the water multiple times per year? How is having lots of data helpful
when doing science?
Water Testing Answer Key
Follow the directions for each test, record your data, and answer all the questions as you work through
the tests and talk through things as a class.
IMPORTANT: After testing do NOT dump your samples back in the water.
1.
Why not empty the test tubes back into the water? Test tablets may have chemicals that are harmful to
critters in the wetlands
Temperature: What can knowing the temperature of the water tell us? How much oxygen is in water, how
much shade is available, hoe biologically active organisms can be
4) Remove the lid and contents from your sampling container.
5) Hold the empty bucket halfway below the surface and the bottom of the wetland, and wait
60 seconds.
6) Read the temperature as the number in green on the black strip, and record it below:
Temperature: ________°C
Dissolved Oxygen: Why is this important to measure? Name two factors that affect the amount of DO.
Organisms in the water need oxygen! Can tell us things about biological activity, shade, temperature, etc. Affected by temp.,
movement of water, biological activity, decomposition.
6) Fill the small tube with water.
7) Add TWO dissolved oxygen tablets to the tube. Screw on the cap, and make sure there are
no air bubbles in the tube.
8) Mix the tube by shaking it until the tablets are completely dissolved. This will take a while.
9) Wait 5 more minutes after the tablets are dissolved. (You may work on other tests while
waiting.)
10) Compare the color of the sample to the chart on your card, and record your dissolved
oxygen level below:
Dissolved Oxygen:_____________ppm
Turbidity: What does this measure? How can this relate to erosion? Why is having a high turbidity
dangerous?Tells us how clear the water is. Can give indication of how much erosion is happening at site and upstream. High
turbidity can impair food hunting (can’t see prey/predator), dirt can clog up gills and habitats, block out light.
4) Fill the bucket up to the test fill line (Located outside on the right side of the label).
5) Look for the black and white secchi disk icon on the bottom of the bucket.
6) Compare the appearance of the secchi disk icon to the chart on your card, and record your
turbidity below:
Turbidity:______________JTUs
Nitrate: What are two sources of Nitrogen in water? What can happen if there is too much Nitrogen?
Fertilizers, decomposition of organisms, fecal matter. Too much N (usually a limiting nutrient) can lead to overgrowth of plants,
crowding out light and space, and using up oxygen upon death and decomposition (eutrophication).
5)
6)
7)
8)
Fill a plastic square test tube to 5 mL line.
Add ONE nitrate tablet, cap, and mix until table has disintegrated.
Wait 5 minutes for color to develop.
Compare color to the chart on your card, and record you nitrate level below:
Nitrate: ____________________ppm
Phosphate: If the phosphate we see in The Wetlands is coming from fertilizer run-off on campus, where
would you expect to see the highest amount of phosphate? the lake (surrounded by the most grassy area)
5)
6)
7)
8)
Fill another plastic square test tube to the 10mL line.
Add ONE Phosphorus tablet, cap, and mix until disintegrated.
Wait five minutes for color to develop.
Compare the color to the chart on your card, and record below:
Phosphate:_________________ppm
pH: This is a measurement of how acidic or basic the water is; ranges from 0 (very acidic) to 14 (very
basic), with 7 being neutral; natural water is about 6.5 to 8.2. What can happen if the pH is too basic or
too acidic? Plants and animals aren’t adapted to it—disrupts their normal body functions, can cause die offs
4) Fill another Square tube to the 10 mL line.
5) Add ONE pH Tablet, cap, and mix until the table has disintegrated.
6) Compare the color to the chart on your card, and record your pH levels below:
pH: _________________
Iron: This is one of the main metals in the orange precipitate of the Abandoned Mine Drainage seeping
from old mine sites on campus and around SW Virginia. How can heavy metals like iron get into the food
chain, and why can that be dangerous? Taken up by plants, which then get eaten by animals. The higher up the food
chain, the higher the concentration of heavy metals that will accumulate in bodies because they eat more of the species on the
lower levels of the food chain (biomagnification).
Use the contents of the blue container.
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
Fill the test tube to the 5 mL line (Code 0230)
Add 5 drops of Iron Reagent #1, cap, and mix.
Using the white plastic spoon, add 0.05 g of the Iron Reagent # 2 powder to the mixture.
Cap, mix, and wait 3 minutes.
Put the tube in the black Iron Comparator, match the sample to a color, and record your
iron level below:
Iron: ____________ppm
Data:
4) Record the data from other groups in the following table. Then calculate the % O2 Saturation using
the dissolved Oxygen table below:
Sample
Site
Temp.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
DO
% O2
Saturation
Use this chart to determine % Saturation:
Dissolved Oxygen
Temp C 0 ppm 4 ppm 8 ppm
2
0
29
58
4
0
31
61
6
0
32
64
8
0
34
68
10
0
35
71
12
0
37
74
14
0
39
78
16
0
41
81
18
0
42
84
20
0
44
88
22
0
46
92
24
0
48
95
26
0
49
99
28
0
51
102
30
0
53
106
Turbidity
Nitrate
Phos.
pH
Iron
5) How do temperature, %O2 saturation,
turbidity, nitrate, pH, and iron levels change
throughout the wetland? Which values
change more than others?
Students should talk about any patterns (or lack
of patterns found in data. Iron will probably
vary the most.
Graph the levels of Iron at each sampling station below (be sure to fill in the numbers on the axes).
Questions:
5) What is Abandoned mine drainage?
Heavy metal precipitates can accompanying rise or fall in pH caused by reactions with minerals left in
coal mining sites. Seeps out into waterways.
6) Aside from being a beautiful space on campus, what is the purpose of The Wetlands?
to filter the heavy metals and neutralize pH of the water before it’s carried down farther in the
watershed (before hitting the Guest River)
7) How well is The Wetlands working? Use evidence from our tests to support your claim.
Students should talk about their data—probably iron levels will decrease going towards the lake, maybe
pH will change. Main point is using data as evidence to support a claim.
8) What is the benefit of testing the water multiple times per year? How is having lots of data helpful
when doing science? Testing all year gives indications of any seasonal shifts in the flow of AMD or
in the function of the plants—data might say one thing in the summer and give evidence for
another conclusion in the winter. More data in science is always better because it gives more
evidence to back up a claim. Testing the Wetlands once may give skewed results from any number
of errors, but testing multiple times gives more assurance that you find isn’t just by chance (more
credible to people not involved in the testing)
Suggested Follow-up Activities
To help students put all this together and apply it, they should be challenged to do some follow up
activities. If you structure restructure this as a Learning Cycle lesson plan (with an exploration, concept
development, and application phase) that focuses on just one abstract concept (e.g. energy flow
through a food web, pollution accumulation in food webs), make sure to follow up with an application
phase. In this phase, students should apply the concept in a new way; however, no new concepts should
be introduced in this phase. Stick to the original one.
Here are some idea:



Create a food web that might exist in The Wetlands. Trace the flow of energy to each organism.
Label the producers, herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores. Don’t forget the original source of
the energy! How would your food web be affected if half of the producers died because of a
drought? What would happen in your food web if the top predators were over-hunted and killed
off? What’s the advantage of being an omnivore?
A power plant upstream from where you live just had a leak in one of its ponds, releasing tons of
coal ash downstream. This coal ash contains mercury, a heavy metal that can be toxic. Write a
letter to the editor of your local newspaper explaining the effects this mercury could have on
food webs near the river. Make sure you explain how it gets into the food web, how it travels
through the food web, what happens to the levels of mercury, and how this could impact the
plants, animals, and people that live in the area.
Create a brochure for The Wetlands to help community members understand why it’s there. Be
sure to explain why it’s there, how it works, and why its job is important. Use your class data
from your tests as evidence for how well it’s doing its job.
Red Oak
Hemlock Tree
Arrowhead
Dogwood Tree
Milkweed
Cattail
Monarch Butterfly
Mayfly
Grasshopper
Frog
Snake
Deer
Squirrel
Fox
Great Blue Herron Great Horned Owl