Variables

The variables I will need to control is where I do the test as in location with soil and water. Water may not  think as being as vital if the river was flowing but I am keeping it in the same location as to in places in the first test the water was stagnate and it may pass through chemicals along the way which may very well change the results. The soil i have chosen for each is in the same place as the water was taken from and always around a meter from the water sources (exception being the mangroves where I had to go further in as I wanted a true mangrove soil analysis.)
Time will also be another factor for me as tides will affect the last two of my results. So I am going at 5pm for each test.
What I tried to change was weather I was lucky enough to go after rain which changed the water from being stagnate in places to a continuous flowing creek.

Second Sampling 28/3/2012

This being my second sample I wanted to vary the results and I was lucky enough to go after a hour to two of medium rainfall. This I found really varied the results. The creek at no point was stagnant and was flowing at a fair speed. I hypothesised that this would increase the turbidity of the water and the moisture content of the soil as well as maybe a slight variation in the salinity of the water.

This shows the increased water flow from stagnate in first set of testing.

Start of creek 1

This is the main pipe of which the storm water comes from, to be honest I do not understand how the council can call this a natural creek in anyway after investigation all I could see was that this is directly fed  from storm water drains. You may also notice that on the left of the pipe the sandstone has blown out. Pollution is also very visible in the form of bottles. Other than that it seems to be healthy enough even though the water is so turbid do to the recent downfalls. 

Middle of Creek 2

These images show that the water was flowing but also collecting in large pools. You can also clearly see the stirred up water in the picture on the left. The rotting tree on the rocks was also a common sight, a few smaller trees had been displaced since I was last sampling even from the small amount of rain that we had had. 

Creek hitting harbour (Mangroves)

This i found was most evident where the water had really picked up as there were vast more amounts of water in here than there were as of last time. The mangroves themselves seem more swollen these were both same time (5pm after school) so there would be little or no tidal difference, which therefore had something to do with the amount of water. This water interestingly sort of passes through a channel of sandstone covered in a algae (blue green) where the mangrove only present on the left hand side also has its own water frontage from the sea so it works at that further down which was inaccessible because you would just sink into the mangroves, this channel of fresh/salt water coexists with the completely salt water of the mangroves which sits to the right and sometimes flows into the channel. 

Harbour.

The harbour has no change really as of its mass, the only real change you will get is when you go in the day due to tidal activity. I predicted no change in the results if i conducted them correctly and no unpredictable change occurred such as oil spillage from the Shell Refinery across the cove. 

Equipment

Equipment 

• Used 4 water bottles for each water samples 600 mL
• 4 snap lock bags for soil
• Collecting Rocks 
• Photos to be taken of area 

Equipment for analysis

• 4 test tubes for water
• pH indicator 
• Conductivity meter 
• Phosphate indicators 
• Filter paper
• Funnels 
• 4 bekers 
• Tile bowls 
• Sodium chloride 

All of this doubled as I repeated test. 

Soil Types

This is the soil in the area of Smoothy Park, Gore Cove Reserve.  This particular area is dominated by Colluvial Hawkesbury. Also with some touching Erosional Gymea up the top where the first samples would of taken place. Although this was useful in getting an understanding of the true soils in the area I find that it may only be practical in using it when understanding the soil samples from my fourth sampling area in the harbour. This is due to me sampling mainly sediments as they were the dominating form of soil for about a meter or two in either direction of the creek. This sediment also had vegetation growing out of it so it was a stationary soil not just runoff. 

First Sampling 22/3/2012

First sampling was done after period of no rain, the creek was stagnant in large pools for the most part around Berry creek. I took four samples of soil and water at each of the sites mentioned in a earlier post.  

Start of creek

Middle of Creek 

Vegetation

My first sampling would of taken place at the right top hand corner of the red box and worked down from there. So by saying this my first sample would of taken place in what is a Blackbutt Gully forest. It is hard to know where my second sample would of taken place as this diagram varies greatly in the middle of the creek where the sample would have taken place, but my best guess would be that is was in the sandstone gallery rainforest area. My third sample has taken place in the mangroves which in this case seem to have been Estuarine mangroves. My fourth and final sampling took place in the Diclimax Sandstone Scrub area although a fairly sheer face separates the water from the bushland.