Meeting Abstract
Anthropogenic pollutants have devastating consequences on the nation’s freshwater supply and effect not only the quality of the water, but the health and viability of the organisms that live within the ecosystem. While the movement and impact of toxins at large scales have been extensively studied, the examination of exposure to a pollutant at the scale of a single organism has been non-existent. Aquatic organisms may be experiencing different concentrations of anthropogenic pollutants depending on their location within the water body. The purpose of this experiment was to identify “hot” and “cold” spots of toxic exposure in different locations of a stream based on fluid dynamics. These data will be used to infer what organisms might be exposed to under different flow conditions. Data was collected in a series of artificial streams (approximately 17.4 x 0.98 x 0.39 m) using dopamine as a chemical tracer. The dopamine was measured in a riffle, pool, bend, woody debris, sand, and gravel sections of the stream using an electrode and electrochemical detection system. The data was imported into ArcGIS 10.3.1 (Esri, Redlands, CA) to create maps demonstrating the chemical distribution throughout the varying stream features. Preliminary data analyses provide indication of potentially more toxic areas of a stream for organisms compared to others based on the interaction of hydrodynamics, stream hydrology, and physics. Our findings are beneficial to not only our understanding of chemical movement, but in determining which areas of a stream need to be focused on for conservation and mitigation efforts.
