Saturday, October 29, 2011
Hall 1-2 (San Jose Convention Center)
The Neponset River watershed is an urban watershed that covers approximately 78 square kilometers and is located southwest of Boston, Massachusetts in the Northeastern Coastal Zone ecoregion. The purpose of this study was to assess land use influence on water quality for 4 different land cover treatments (golf, forest, residential, industrial) at12 sites for the month of June 2010. Parameters measured in the field were pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature, conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity and in the laboratory were total suspended solids, ash free dry mass, particulate carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, nitrate, ammonium, phosphate, and chlorophyll. Only 2 out of 12 parameters were no more than marginally significant for land use difference. However, our power was low, probably due to low samples size. While not statistically significant, golf land use samples were found to be higher than other land uses for 8 of the parameters. We conclude that for the June sampling event, land use did not influence water quality, likely due to low rainfall prior to sampling.