Environmental Monitoring and Analysis for Undergraduate Investigative Laboratory Instruction in Environmental Biology

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The Biology Department has recently revised its Bachelor of Science degree program in Biology to include a concentration in Environmental Biology and to incorporate a field internship/research component. To support the new concentration, the department is restructuring its course in Ecology developing new upper-level courses in Environmental Biology, including a course on Biomonitoring and Water Pollution. The revised Ecology course emphasizes the principles of sampling, data collection, analysis, and presentation in a 6-week investigation of Carver Pond in Bridgewater using continuous recording field water quality probes. This presentation serves as the background database of the dynamics of a local ecosystem that students use to study patterns of change in biotic communities within and surrounding Carver Pond. The new course in Biomonitoring and Water Pollution involves upper-level students in a semester-long field and laboratory investigation of stress indicators in fish and macroinvertebrate communities of a local river system. This project makes use of new equipment to support the investigative undergraduate laboratory experience in the revised Ecology course and the ecosystem stress investigation in the Biomonitoring course. The major equipment items needed to support these undergraduate research experiences include a single-channel Auto Analyzer II Continuous Flow Autoanalyzer with a TAOS Operating System for data acquisition and graphical analysis, Hydrolab recording environmental sondes to continuously monitor water quality changes occurring in a local pond, and a Doppler flow meter for improved discharge measurements for loading calculations.