As an essay draft, I have compiled everything I know about the topic and find it a little broad for me to continue, they are interconnected yet their specific area and study subjects varies. Thus, I am having a hard time whether to include more of one article or less of another.

     As my first draft for the CP assignment, I have managed to incorporate as many as scientific articles as I can which totaled up to 5 articles. I writes from the components in air and water changes are causing water deteriorating to the drinking water quality in our daily life. 

     Yet there is a problem that I have incorporated too many information. And even if they are all useful information, I am not feeling confident about this essay as a whole for I only want to focus on several main points instead of digress too much from my main arguments.

     Professor wood gave me some good advices here. I am overly emphasizing what is question and I need more why questions in my essays in return to show my audience as to why it's an important and meaningful essay.

 

Qilin Li

Professor Joel Wood

WR 39C 33354

January 24, 2022

                                                Climate change and water quality

 

People nowadays are generally more aware of climate change and its influential effects on earth, worldwide rivers, oceans are part of the victim of this human-incurred change as well. Yet how many of us would really dig a little further to look at how they are influenced? Take Rhine and Meuse rivers in a low-lying Netherland near the delta for example. In year 2003, after six months of drought, the water discharge is significantly lower than that in 2002. The water flow was 778 m³/s compared to 1385 m³/s in 2002. Rhine rivers gather its flow primarily through the snowmelt from the Alps and Meuse solely depends on rainfall and thus only amount to 20 m³/s in median discharge. This long period of drought has certainly a major impact on water quality resulted from aspects like temperature, oxygen dissolved and the chloride concentrations.

            Among above mentioned three factors influencing water quality, in a broad view, temperature is the main influencer disrupting literally all physico-chemical equilibrium and even biological reactions. More specifically stating, kinetic movement of an existing chemical reaction can increase to the extent of double as a 10 Celsius increase in temperature. As a result, Solubilization, degradation and evaporation can occur and thus further induce the increased concentration of dissolved substances and a reduction in concentrations of dissolved gases. The last point is very vital due to the fact the oxygen saturation will decrease by 10% a 3 Celsius increase in temperature. As IPCC had states, the 21-century temperature is expected to increase on average 1.8 to 4.0 degree Celsius under every scenario. It is foreseeable that soon, there would be a dying tendency in summer.

            How water flow intensity is another major component which influence water substances concentration in water as well. We would discuss this using extreme case like droughts. They alter water quality through directly dilute or concentrate the dissolved substances in the rivers. For low flow river, one obvious feature is the increased temperature, dissolved substances in water but a decrease in oxygen level. Of course, there is also a positive effect which is to reduce the pollutant in water because of the low water velocity. Floods, on the other hand, could jeopardies the quality in another method. Waterborne pathogens can spread across the freshwater after a contamination by human or animal waste from heavy rainfall. When the level of flow exceeds the combined sewer system (CSS), the excess flow ran directly towards surface water. Stormwater is also one of the main sources of coliform. With above mentioned rising temperature, there is a likelihood of increased survival rate of pathogen.

In H.A.J. Senhorst’s case study, they choose Dutch as a subject and had studied its water systems and effluents. Many regional surface water municipal wastewater treatment plants are expected to be the main contributor of containminants.  And this load of containminants will increase under low flow conditions like in summer for there is not enough water to dilute the containminants. They used statistics gathered from the basin of Dommel brook to illustrate the change. This phosphate variation given below had shown that concentration of this chemical is higher in the summertime than in the wintertime. Thus, the assumption of discharge level and containminants level correlate holds true. Therefore, there must be a continuous source of phosphate like wastewater treatment plant. And indeed, geographical distribution had shown an strong correlation between phosphate level and the presence of treatment plant.

            In Delpla’s article, after introducing several basic indicators and possible influences caused by climate change upon rivers. The article later chooses to focus on a narrower yet much more relate and interesting topic which is how drinking water derived from rivers and underground water could be affected. Delpla used one historical fact from Iowa, USA to explain how floods make an impact on our daily drinking water quality. The contamination of underground water had led to the outbreak of Acanthamoeba keratitis in Iowa, 1994. Fisty percent of the water borne disease in the US during the last fifty years had followed a period of heavy rainstorm. Although the risk related to drinking water is low in developed countries, there is a risk in private supply.

            Image presented here is a summary of Delpla’s study regarding the climate change impact on surface water quality. There are two major perspectives (temperature and rainfalls) and their concrete manifestation (drought and floods). They further divide the environment into natural or man-made. For the streams, the main influencers are pathogens, cyanobacteria, and DOM.

            Komatsu recognized several factors like water temperature, dissolved oxygen and nutrients from previous research and had furthered the study through a long-term investigation upon how climate change can influence water quality.  They simulated the results of lake model for 1991-2001 and 2091-2100 to make a comparison. And according to their study (Komatsu,2007), the surface water temperature of 2090s is 3.4 Celsius higher than the same lake from 1990s. The hypolimnion is predicted to increase by 2.8 Celsius and higher temperature might lead to longer thermal stratification period. As a result of this change, oxygen demand for aerobic decomposition and flow of phosphorus from the sediments will increase the concentration of phosphorus in the hypolimnion. Nutrients release amount change could cause the alternation in nutrient circulation. Using several models to solidify their assumption, Komatsu tested the sensitivity of lake water temperature to the climate change and the oxygen concentration inside the lake.

            In all, most of the articles recognizing there is an influence from climate change to water quality in different water body (rivers, lakes) or city drinking water. Temperature, oxygen concentration and floods are certainly major factors influencing the water quality. Many are gathering the data and comparing the difference in each time and used many models when wanting to study actual nutrients concentration in lake.

As an essay draft, I have compiled everything I know about the topic and find it a little broad for me to continue, they are interconnected yet their specific area and study subjects varies. Thus, I am having a hard time whether to include more of one article or less of another.

   

Professor Comments:

Hi Qilin, Great start here! Overall, this draft is doing an especially good job of providing substantial and in-depth details on the topics and discussions it introduces. My main suggestion for revision (which may speak to some of your comments at the end) would be to take some time (especially towards the beginning of the essay) to slow down and define terms or provide context and scale. At times, some of the article discussions get quite technical - providing the reader with a clear understanding of important background information could help these sections feel more communicative. In addition to giving space for more initial context, I think you could also consider directing the organization more overtly - why is this a good example? What questions does it raise? Does the next article explore a different side of the same phenomena or is there a different kind of relationship between them? Being intentional about communicating these relationships in writing can be very powerful for securing cohesion across a paper, especially with very technical and in-depth discussions of findings. All best! - Joel

                                                           Works Cited

WHITEHEAD, P. G., et al. “A Review of the Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Surface Water Quality.” Hydrological Sciences Journal, vol. 54, no. 1, Taylor & Francis Group, 2009, pp. 101–23, https://doi.org/10.1623/hysj.54.1.101.

 

Delpla, I., et al. “Impacts of Climate Change on Surface Water Quality in Relation to Drinking Water Production.” Environment International, vol. 35, no. 8, Elsevier Ltd, 2009, pp. 1225–33, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2009.07.001.

        

       Senhorst, H. A. J., and J. J. G. Zwolsman. “Climate Change and Effects on Water Quality: a First Impression.” Water Science and Technology, vol. 51, no. 5, 2005, pp. 53–59, https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2005.0107.

 

Komatsu, Eiji, et al. “A Modeling Approach to Forecast the Effect of Long-Term Climate Change on Lake Water Quality.” Ecological Modelling, vol. 209, no. 2, Elsevier B.V, 2007, pp. 351–66, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2007.07.021.

 

Murdoch, Peter S., et al. “POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON SURFACE‐WATER QUALITY IN NORTH AMERICA1.” Journal of the American Water Resources Association, vol. 36, no. 2, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2000, pp. 347–66,

 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-1688.2000.tb04273.x.