The partnership between Cleveland State University and the Ohio Water Sentinel program, entering into its third year, offers a unique opportunity. The Water Sentinel program has been collecting data through citizen scientists since 2013, and although it is shared with agencies such as the EPA, it has largely been unanalyzed. Cue Dr. Kilbane and his students in the Research Methods course.
According to the Cleveland State University coursebook, this course is designed to meet the needs of future science and math teachers. It provides students with the tools that scientists use to solve scientific problems, gives them the opportunity to use these tools to design and perform experiments in a laboratory setting, and enables them to become acquainted with the way scientific information is communicated. Students are paired with organizations and scientists that match their interest areas, and work on real data sets and research. The Water Sentinel collected data provides an opportunity for students interested in water to not only view several years of data, but they are also trained in water testing so they can additionally collect their own data to aid in their research.
Students used the data to analyze various questions. Two groups, comprised of two students each, chose the Sierra Club as their research focus in the Fall of 2015. One group researched the existence of a correlation between 48 hour rainfall and nitrite and nitrite levels in five Ohio watersheds. The second pair looked at the use of the land, rural to urban vs suburban to urban, and its effects on the phosphate and nitrate/nitrite levels in Maumee and Cuyahoga watersheds associated with the amount of rainfall. This partnership not only puts the citizen scientist collected data to good use, but also offers a chance for students to suggest ways we can better collect, organize, and present our data.
Below are the links to view each report, and the results of the analysis, in their entirety.
Correlation Between 48 Hour Rainfall and Nitrite and Nitrite Levels in Five Ohio Watersheds