Aquatic Systems 2

Assess the importance of maintaining healthy water for humans and the environment.

## Indicators

**a. Analyze emerging health challenges such as the spread of disease, mercury in fish, blue-green algae and E. coli in drinking water that result from changes to the condition of aquatic systems.**

https://www.ontario.ca/page/blue-green-algae The bacteria of blue green algae can be harmful to humans and animals. Blue green algae grows from phosphorus and nitrogen, the extra nitrogen comes from fertilizers and septic tanks leaching in to the water. You are suppose to avoid drinking, bathing and swimming in the water that has a growth of blue green algae D.S

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water - The World Health Organization states the problems with contaminated drinking water. Their goal is to have safe and affordable water to drink. Transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio are all due to poor water sanitation and water contamination. Other health challenges including dengue fever and malaria are carried by organisms that live in small bodies of water. The World Health Organization plans to resolve these challenges and effects by implementing their water quality guidelines and in many other ways. SR

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7121614/ - This Website provides a brief description of the conerns and threats to the aquatic ecosystems. It also gives you different sources for the topic,and what has resulted in contamination. It shows how to improve the health in aquatic systems and to avoid the fast spread of diseases-KDP

**b. Analyze the rationale for developing and enforcing water quality standards such as the Saskatchewan Surface Water Quality Objectives and the Canadian Water Quality Index and legislation such as the Canada Water Act and the International River Improvements Act.**

https://www.safewater.org/school-programs-overview/ - This website from Safe Drinking Water Foundation provides information on school programs where students can test the quality of water samples and determine their fitness for drinking. There are a number of hands-on kits that can be ordered from the website that provide the tools students need to perform tests on water samples. There are also a number of lesson plans on water quality that teachers can use with their students. MH

**c. Examine how individuals, organizations (e.g., watershed associations), First Nations and government agencies (e.g. Saskatchewan Water Security Agency) work to ensure clean and abundant water through producing water regulations and allocation policies.**

**d. Assess how irrigation projects affect food production, water availability, soil salinization, and groundwater**.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-environmental-impact-of-irrigation.html-soil salinization is when there is an increase in salt levels in soil. Decreases fish availability which decreases how much fish can be sold to stores and such. Increases groundwater levels. - EB

https://www.fao.org/3/w4347e/w4347e10.htm - This huge article explains how irrigation is good for us and how it might be bad for environment. It describes how irrigation is good for food production, rural comunities life quality but is expensive and might be bad for nature. Also this article contains information about how it afects water availability, soil salinization, and groundwater. - AZ

**e. Describe the operation and effectiveness of technologies and processes developed to protect drinking water sources locally and globally.**

https://www.goodnet.org/articles/7-new-technologies-that-create-clean-water-for-thirsty-world- This website is a great source for you to get to know different technologys, it gives you 7 different techs and gives a description of each and how it works. In each paragraph it also gives you other sources to click on to give you a better understanding of the given word. KDP

**f. Analyze the impacts of point source and non-point source pollution on humans and aquatic systems.**

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/point-source-and-nonpoint-sources-pollution/ - This is a great website for this topic, it gives you a great introduction on what humans do that affect water pollution. It explains what point source and non point source is and how differnt things affect it. Gives examples of different places and how they are effected from both. It also has a vocabulary if you have troubles understanding any given words. KDP

**g. Research the sources, effects, and management and mitigation strategies of contaminants such as pathogens, organic matter, heavy metals, sediment, heat, petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals such as pesticides in aquatic and/or marine ecosystems.**

**https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7121614/**

this website describes the sources and effects of contaminants in aquatic ecosystems. It describes how human activities can affect aquatic ecosystems with pollution. Human activities resulting in contamination of aquatic ecosystems and their adverse impact. This website also describes what the pollutants in aquatic ecosystems do to the animals and plants that use the water. ZB

**h. Investigate how human activities (e.g., overfishing, photo-degradation of plastic waste, shipping, coastal development and offshore extraction of oil and minerals) impact marine ecosystems (e.g., coral reef degradation, introduction of invasive species and reduced fish populations).**

http://www.ramp-alberta.org/resources/fisheries/management.aspx#:~:text=Fishing%20can%20have%20both%20direct,by%20changes%20in%20fish%20populations. Fishing can have a good effect and bad effect on aquatic ecosystems. Over fishing can effect the population in the aquatic systems. Do to the cold weather in Alberta the fish grow slow so when over fishing occurs it takes longer for the fish to preproduce. D.S

**i. Investigate the role of muskeg and moss in water filtration and food preservation for First Nations communities.**

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/muskeg this acticle goes in depth about the threat and health and safety of muskeg

**j. Research advances in technologies such as desalinization plants, water treatment plants and home water filtrations systems, which are designed to maintain and improve water quality.**

https://www.waterworld.com/home/article/14071194/desalination-opportunities-and-challenges -This article discusses recent advances in desalinization plants due to water scarcity in the world becoming a problem. This situation has led to a focus on developing seawater and brackish water as alternative sources of water. Water infrastructure energy use and the carbon footprint of water consumption have also both become critical issues. This article also discusses issues of energy use efficiency and the environmental impact of concentrate. A high concentration of total dissolved solids in water affects human health and causes other problems such as scaling in pipes and corrosion of piping. Modern desalinization techniques include distillation and membrane filtration techniques. A recent advancement discussed in this article is colocated plants. A desalinization plant is colocated with a power plant in an area where the power plant draws seawater to be used as cooling water. The desalination plant uses heated seawater from the power plant’s cooling water loop as feedwater, which requires less energy for desalination. - KTMP

**k. Design a system of source water protection for a community`s drinking water recognizing the precautionary principle**.

https://www.epa.gov/sourcewaterprotection/basic-information-about-source-water-protection- This website provides the basic information of water source protection. This specific link answers five important questions about the protection of a water source and provides; What source water is, why you should be interested in protecting source water, examples of source water protection, what the EPA's role is in source water protection, and what other drinking water programs provide. At the bottom of the article, you are provided with other links that can also provide further information about the water protection of drinking water. I chose this link because it provides lots of information on source water protection and it answers each question in detail as well as provides pictures for the reader. - TC