KananaskisRiver_ENSC

The University of Calgary Environmental Science Program has an annual field school in the lower Kananaskis Valley, SW Alberta, that occurs in the first week of September. At several river sites, largely consistent among years, senior students collect data on water chemistry, macroinvertebrates and hydrology. Water chemistry data are obtained using field and lab instruments by the students and by a lab technician. These annual data are analyzed each year by students to assess human impacts associated with recreation in the valley.

Citation

University of Calgary, Environmental Science Program. 2022-04-30. "KananaskisRiver_ENSC" (dataset). 3.0.0. DataStream. https://doi.org/10.25976/b9zx-bd54.

Funding Sources

University of Calgary Environmental Science Program

Data Collection Information

At each site, physio-chemical parameters were measured with replication using individual hand-held meters. Grab samples following standard protocols were collected for geochemistry analysis (one 500 mL bottle, field filtered with 0.45 micrometer cellulose nitrate membrane), alkalinity (one 500 mL bottle, unfiltered) and microbiology (four 125 mL bottles, unfiltered).

Samples were transported back to the field station in coolers with ice packs. Subsamples were collected in scintillation vials, from the field-filtered geochemistry sample, for major ion analysis. At the field station students used Hach spectrophotometers to analyzed for sulphate (Method 8051 SulfaVer 4 Method Powder Pillows), ammonium (Method 8155 Salicylate Method Powder Pillows), ortho-phosphate (Method 8048 PhosVer 3 (Ascorbic Acid) Method Powder Pillows), and silica (Method 8185 Silicomolybdate Method Powder Pillow). Alkalinity was measured using a Hach digital titrator (Method 10244 Phenolphthalein and Total Alkalinity), while samples collected for microbiology were analyzed for total coliform and Escherichia coli (recently Colilert test). Major ions where determined by ion chromatography at the Environmental Science Laboratory (University of Calgary).

Prior to field work, students were trained on the use of hand-held meters, including calibration, and of field spectrophotometers using standards. All field and lab work by students was supervised by staff with expertise in water chemical analyses.

Data Collection Processing

Data were reviewed and analyzed each year. Potentially anomalous values were checked against original values or field notes and corrected if errors were detected. Otherwise, the 'anomalous' values were retained.

Attribution Licence (ODC-By) v1.0

You are free to share, copy, distribute, use, modify, transform, build upon, and produce works from the data as long as you attribute any public use of the data, or works produced from the data, in the manner specified in the licence. For any use or redistribution of the data, or works produced from it, you must make clear to others the licence of the data and keep intact any notices on the original data. https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1-0/

API Access

curl -G https://api.datastream.org/v1/odata/v4/Records --data-urlencode "\\$filter=DOI eq '10.25976/b9zx-bd54'" -H "x-api-key: PRIVATE-API-KEY"

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