Water Quality in Silicon Valley

Overview

Objectives/Goals We strongly believe that urbanization has greatly impacted many watersheds in Silicon Valley due to the decrease of natural land, which increases chemical and ion concentrations in the creeks. Because of the rapid urbanization of this area, we wanted to analyze the effects on the water quality. The water quality in rural areas is better than that in urban areas due to different land use patterns and point source pollutions. With the increase in impervious area as the environment becomes more urban, the water is unable to penetrate the ground and filter out any chemicals and toxins. Methods/Materials We selected twelve sampling points located on four different watersheds around Silicon Valley and collected data for three months. During each visit, we used the Yellow Springs Instruments (YSI) Pro Plus meter to measure several parameters crucial to the analysis of water quality. The data was then compared to the most recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards set by the government. We compiled this data into an Excel spreadsheet and created several graphic images to display the data. Geographical Information System (GIS) softwares were used to process and map out the impervious area of the studied region. Results We observed that as we moved downstream, sampling points became more and more polluted due to higher impervious area percentages, and dissolved oxygen concentrations decreased. Alluvium formed creeks tended to have higher SPC values because the ions dissolved more easily in the alluvium formation as compared to other geological formations like JV. Conclusions/Discussion Urbanization will bring more pollution to ambient water, but with proper management plans, creek ecosystems can be preserved and sustained. For example, Google proposed best management plans throughout the course of the construction, which proved to be effective in the conservation of the creek's health.

Competition history

• CSEF 2017 Environmental Science · Entry S1210

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Environmental Analysis projects
• CSEF Environmental Analysis projects
• Every CSEF 2017 project