Explore and Restore Maryland Streams

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(2) Chemical Water Quality Testing

Water chemistry measurements: Testing the stream water for various parameters provides information on water quality at the time of sampling. Repeated testing of the same site at different times of year and over many years can reveal trends in the stream’s health. Long term trends can be useful in monitoring the stream, understanding its pollution sources, and how to repair them.

We recommend primarily testing for dissolved oxygen, pH, phosphates, nitrates, and transparency.  If possible, please also test for turbidity, chloride, conductivity, and total dissolved solids. We have organized our equipment recommendations in a chart and identified some grade recommendations for the different kits.

Additional information:

Share your findings: Maryland Fieldscope is where you can upload stream data collected by students, and where you can find additional data to use in the classroom to compare, analyze, track trends, and more.