ISSS608 2017-18 T3 Assign Yang Zhengyan
Mini-Challenge 2 : Like a Duck to Water
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Contents
Background
Water pollution is a serious problem faced by current society, the contamination of water bodies, usually as a result of human activities. Water bodies is a general concept includes lakes, rivers, oceans, aquifers and groundwater. Water pollution results when contaminants are introduced into the natural environment. For example, releasing inadequately treated wastewater into natural water bodies can lead to degradation of aquatic ecosystems. In turn, this can lead to public health problems for people living downstream. And industry pollution will cause more severity issues with toxic chemicals. Water pollution is the leading worldwide cause of death and disease not only for human also animals.
Boonsong Lekagul Preserve
Last year, the Kasios Furniture Company was implicated in environmental damage to the Boonsong Lekagul Wildlife Preserve for both dumping toxic waste and polluting the air with chemicals from its manufacturing process. But Kasios is not taking these accusations lying down, and they deny any accusation of industrial waste dumping! Kasios’ spokespersons state that there isn’t any ground contamination near the remote ranger station that was suggested by last year’s mini-challenge 1 and 3 participants, and they have inspected that area and found it as pristine as the rest of the preserve.
Outraged ornithology professors from Mistford College journeyed out to look over the dumping site themselves and perform soil analyses. They returned to report that the site looked like there had been recent excavation and building activities going on. Boonsong Preserve rangers later confirmed that a new ranger station was being built at that site! Soil samples taken from the site were inconclusive in detecting Methylosmolene (the toxic manufacturing chemical in the suspected dumping) or any other contaminant, as new top soil had been trucked in.
Investigation approach
With a primary piece of evidence against Kasios now gone, investigators will need to take another approach. Professors in the Mistford College Hydrology Department have come forward with several years of water sensor readings from rivers and streams in the preserve. These samples were taken from different locations scattered throughout the area and contain measurements of several chemicals of possible interest, but they have never been analyzed due to lack of funding.
Normal water quality testing parameter
WHO has issued guidelines for drinking water quality, a report in three volumes. Vol. 1 deals with guideline values, Vol. 2 deals with each contaminant and Vol. 3 gives information on how to handle water supplies in small rural communities. WHO recognizes that very stringent standards cannot be used universally and so a range of guideline values for more than 60 parameters have been elaborated. Most nations have their own guidelines or standards. The control exerted by local regulatory authorities may differ from place to place depending on the local situation. So how can acceptable water quality be defined? What can the harbour-master do to ensure quality? Ensuring the quality of the harbour basin when it is contiguous with estuarine or coastal waters is perhaps beyond the scope of the harbour-master except to ensure that activities in his harbour do not add to the pollution. However, he is duty-bound to ensure that the water used for drinking, cleaning fish, ice making and fish processing meets standards of potability set in his country.
Qualitative and quantitative measurements are needed from time to time to constantly monitor the quality of water from the various sources of supply. The harbour-master should then ensure appropriate water treatment within the fishery harbour complex as well as initiate remedial measures with the suppliers when water supply from outside is polluted.
Water sampling and analysis should be done by ISO-certified laboratories. Wherever laboratories available locally are not ISO-certified, it is advisable to get their quality assessed by an ISO-certified laboratory by carrying out collaborative tests to ensure that variation in the accuracy of results is sufficiently small. Unreliable results exacerbate problems of pollution when corrective action cannot be taken in time. Sampling and monitoring tests should be carried out by qualified technicians.
Requirement
Useing visual analytics help reveal something in this data that could make up for the soil evidence that was destroyed. Your task is to investigate the hydrology data from across the Preserve. You are given a map of the Preserve (with the same base as last year’s challenge), with named sampling sites indicated on the map (the names have local significance, but are just mnemonics for your study) You are also provided with readings from each sampling station over time for several different chemicals and water properties.
Questions
- Characterize the past and most recent situation with respect to chemical contamination in the Boonsong Lekagul waterways. Do you see any trends of possible interest in this investigation? Your submission for this questions should contain no more than 10 images and 1000 words.
- What anomalies do you find in the waterway samples dataset? How do these affect your analysis of potential problems to the environment? Is the Hydrology Department collecting sufficient data to understand the comprehensive situation across the Preserve? What changes would you propose to make in the sampling approach to best understand the situation? Your submission for this question should contain no more than 6 images and 500 words.
- After reviewing the data, do any of your findings cause particular concern for the Pipit or other wildlife? Would you suggest any changes in the sampling strategy to better understand the waterways situation in the Preserve? Your submission for this question should contain no more than 6 images and 500 words.
Vast Challenge 2018 MC2
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