Duke Environmental Field Methods

Come to Hudson Hall 115A tomorrow afternoon at 3 pm to hear about the results of our research projects in Kunshan, China!

Emilia here!

Now that we are back in Durham, we have been hard at work analyzing data. The water quality team has also been sampling surface water around Durham: we have tested the Eno River, the Duke Gardens pond, and the Reclamation Pond on Duke's campus. We are seeing that for the most part, the surface water seems to be healthier in Durham than in China.

Our favorite test to do has been the coliform testing. We pipette 1 mL of the sample into a small petri dish, incubate it at 37 degrees Celsius for 24 hours, then read the results. Below are some results from three samples of a canal in Kunshan: a pink-purple dot indicates a colony of Klebsiella pneumoniae (a naturally occurring coliform) and a blue dot is E. coli (indicative of f***l waste). Looks very contaminated!