Earlier this summer, the CCRO team piled into a large van and headed down Cape, exploring new rivers and their chemistry! Each river was sampled for the normal suite of parameters: temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, nutrients. Some rivers were also measured for discharge. One common theme was that the colder, more groundwater heavy streams were the highest in dissolved nitrogen. This is a pattern common to our normal sampling rivers. All in all 15 rivers, streams, creeks and brooks were sampled at 16 locations. The Bumps River in Barnstable took the prize for highest nitrogen level, at 2.9 mg/L TDN. The Centerville River, also in Barnstable, had the lowest observed dissolved nitrogen level, at 0.25 mg/L, but it’s worth noting that the discharge was less than 0.15 cubic feet per second which was almost non-existent. What does all this mean? CCRO hopes to continue growing in order to be able to sample some of these other rivers, in order to build a bigger, higher resolution picture of the nitrogen story on Cape Cod.
CCRO’s Down Cape Expedition!
