DISSCUSSION:
When beginning this experiment, I felt that I would find that the temperature during the fall/winter season would have an effect on the levels of Coliform and E.coli in Lake Wingra & Edgewood Spring.
My results so far support my hypothesis that temperature would have an effect. The E.coli levels in Lake Wingra have tested higher than the E.coli levels in the Edgewood Spring. Therefore, I think that the E.coli settles more in Lake Wingra due to the higher amount of organisms living in it then the Edgewood Spring where there are less organisms living it in.
Water samples collected at Lake Wingra had the highest concentration of Coliforms and E.coli while water samples collected at Edgewood Spring had the lowest concentration of Coliforms & E.coli. This could mean that there was more coliforms & E.coli present at one location when collected. In figure 1, I was hoping that both temperatures from Lake Wingra and Edgewood Spring would have a similar pattern of the way the temperatures increased or decreased over a period of time. If they did have a similar pattern, this would have meant that the temperature would be directly related to the total level amount of coliforms and E.coli. However, the relationship was not perfect, which means I cannot be confident that the temperature readings are correct and have effect on the levels of coliform & E.coli because of the actual temperature present or the actual levels maybe slightly off. There could be an alternative explanation for this, like having more sediment or organisms in one location site over the other site.
This is the first time an experiment has been performed to see if temperature has an effect on the level of coliforms and E.coli levels of Lake Wingra & Edgewood Spring. Therefore, there was no standard testing procedure for me to follow; this could be a possible source of error because without a proper testing procedure to follow testing the levels could be off and a step during testing could possibly skipped, messing up the results then resulting in a need to start the whole testing procedure over again. A second source of error was the collecting of water samples, there were other organisms at the collecting sites that could have possibly contaminated the samples. This is an error because if the samples were possibly contaminated with organisms the results would have been a contaminated set of results which would differ from the results I got and I would have to do the testing a second time to get an uncontaminated set of results.
If I were to repeat this experiment, there are things I would have done differently. I would have collected more samples in the December/January/February months in order to have more data. When collecting the water samples from Lake Wingra and Edgewood Spring I would have used a better procedure to collect the samples instead of just sticking my hand(s) in the water to get the samples. Also when collecting samples from the sights I would have gotten more than one sample from the sites. When collecting temperature for Lake Wingra and Edgewood Spring I would have used a better thermometer that would have a better reading ability. These changes would have made my experiment more precise, accurate, and give me more data.
The results of my experiment are important to Lake Wingra users. I hope that the Madison Public Health Department will consider seeing what effect temperature has on the levels of coliforms, and E.coli in Lake Wingra when deciding if it safe for people to go to the beaches by it. If there are high levels of coliforms & E.coli in Lake Wingra during the winter months then probably there would be high levels in the summer months. The high levels of bacteria in the sediment should be a concern to the lake users because this is not a factor in determining if Madison beaches should be closed. This will aid them in creating a safer environment for people going to the beach, their children and all other users of the lake.
Overall, I feel that by comparing what effect temperature will have on coliform and E.coli levels in Lake Wingra and Edgewood Spring that it would help the city of Madison to further control the levels while also helping to keep everyone safe. Also I feel that my experiment gives good beginning on the effects temperature has on coliform and E.coli levels over the fall/winter seasons. There aren’t any other studies on what effect temperature will have on coliform and E.coli levels in Lake Wingra and Edgewood Spring but there are other studies on coliform and E.coli levels. They are on the Edgewood College Blackboard website under the link http://natsci.edgewood.edu/wingra/wingra_watershedmgmt.htm