Comparing Dom Quality from Riparian, Terrestrial, and Aquatic Sources from the Summer of 2021 to 2022
Additional Funding Sources
This project was made possible by the NSF Idaho EPSCoR Program and by the National Science Foundation under Award No. OIA-1757324.
Abstract
Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM) is an essential component of aquatic ecosystems, and the source and quality of DOM affect its ecological role. Having a better understanding of how DOM is capable of going through various changes may be beneficial in understanding patterns that may occur over time. This project will be over roughly a year in order to have a better understanding of DOM for possible future research. Overall this project may affect how we will be treating the stream water in order to maintain its natural levels of DOM or this project may be used to predict future patterns of DOM levels within the stream. The aim of this project is to compare the quality of riparian, terrestrial, and aquatic DOM from spring water and surface water. From what we already know about DOM, the different patterns of fluorescence throughout various samples and samples from the same type of source have consistently similar signatures. My project aims to answer these questions: How much DOM is coming from a possible source of either fresh plant matter, dead plant matter, and biofilm and how does DOM quality vary through intermittent and perennial sites? I hypothesize that the main source of DOM would be coming from fresh plant matter or dead plant matter and that the quality of DOM will be much different compared to intermittent and perennial sites. Overall, we can see that most of the DOM comes from dead plant material although there is some influence from biofilm and fresh plants. Intermittent sources were more of a variable than perennial sources.
Comparing Dom Quality from Riparian, Terrestrial, and Aquatic Sources from the Summer of 2021 to 2022
Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM) is an essential component of aquatic ecosystems, and the source and quality of DOM affect its ecological role. Having a better understanding of how DOM is capable of going through various changes may be beneficial in understanding patterns that may occur over time. This project will be over roughly a year in order to have a better understanding of DOM for possible future research. Overall this project may affect how we will be treating the stream water in order to maintain its natural levels of DOM or this project may be used to predict future patterns of DOM levels within the stream. The aim of this project is to compare the quality of riparian, terrestrial, and aquatic DOM from spring water and surface water. From what we already know about DOM, the different patterns of fluorescence throughout various samples and samples from the same type of source have consistently similar signatures. My project aims to answer these questions: How much DOM is coming from a possible source of either fresh plant matter, dead plant matter, and biofilm and how does DOM quality vary through intermittent and perennial sites? I hypothesize that the main source of DOM would be coming from fresh plant matter or dead plant matter and that the quality of DOM will be much different compared to intermittent and perennial sites. Overall, we can see that most of the DOM comes from dead plant material although there is some influence from biofilm and fresh plants. Intermittent sources were more of a variable than perennial sources.