Assessing Water Quality
To asses the water quality of a body of water, there are some steps you would need to take. First, you would observe the water and judge if it looked polluted or if it had an algae bloom for example. Next take a sample of the water and see if it has any algae. The different kinds of algae you find may show if it is healthy or unhealthy water. Thirdly, test the temperature, ammonia levels, dissolved oxygen, nitrate levels, and pH. After that if you wanted you could run different types of chemical tests on the water also. It is important to do all these steps in order because I'm assuming to run all of these tests would cost you a lot of money! If you observed that the water was unhealthy first and was dirty with pollution you were probably right! Or algae blooms are easy to spot too! If that's not good enough you can take a water sample and observe it underneath a microscope you can find different types of algae. Some are more resistant to pollution such as Anabaena, which would mean it would be poor quality water. If you found Stigeoclonium (which helps clean the water) it's more likely to be a healthier quality body of water.
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