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The Concentration of Dissolved Oxygen (DO) at Varying Temperatures (4ºC, 19ºC, 30ºC)
and the Primary Productivity of Elodea at Various amounts of Light
amount of time. (Goldberg) The total primary production within an environment is often
called Gross Primary Production (GPP) and can be measured in three different ways: the
rate of carbon dioxide utilization, the rate of oxygen production (which we will use in this
lab), and the rate of formation of organic compounds. (Primary Production: Wikipedia)
GPP is the amount of solar radiation converted into chemical energy by the light
processes of photosynthesis. (Goldberg) That means that this productivity supports all of
the life in an ecosystem. The ways that the primary producers make this energy available
are through two separate processes; photosynthesis and cellular respiration. The equation
for photosynthesis is 6CO2 + 6H2O C6H12O6 + 6CO2 but that also must include sunlight
and ATP for the process to work. That is why I believe that if plants were introduced to
varying amounts of light, then 100% light would prove to be most productive in oxygen
production and the more oxygen production means more primary production has taken
place. Cellular respiration is required by all living organisms and the equation is C6H12O6
+ 6CO2 6CO2 + 6H2O. (Duedall) Only a small portion of the energy produced by
primary production will be used in secondary production by the organism, the rest will be
Without proper nutrition of the plant or organism the process turns into nothing. In order
to overcome these problems, photosynthesis must include water and carbon dioxide as
well. (Duedall) On top of the need for water and carbon dioxide, the right atmosphere
must also be present for the process to take place. Photosynthesis is known to not work
very well in the dark. This is due to the fact that chlorophyll is not absorbing sunlight and
in turn, not producing glucose. Temperature has an effect similar to the lack of water. If
the temperature is too high or too low then water absorption will become increasingly
respiration, such as the carbon dioxide we exhale, are reactants to photosynthesis. This
cycle is a large part to our survival and the containment of greenhouse gases. The cycle
repeats itself since cellular respiration requires oxygen when the aerobic form is used.
(Duedall)
The oxygen that is required for cellular respiration then has problems to encounter
as well. The kind that we breathe gets thinner and colder as altitude increases and air
pressure decreases. Under water there is something comparable to that lack of oxygen.
Organisms such as fish that live underwater don’t breathe the oxygen that is in H20 but
rather the dissolved oxygen (DO) in the water that is in a free state. (Lab 12. P 136) As
the water gets colder, the oxygen is more readily available since more oxygen is
dissolved in the water. This allows for more organisms to survive and flourish in the
richly oxygenated water. Warm water has the opposite affect and can effectively suffocate
environment in which it’s in. In warm summer months, the sunlight evaporates a vast
amount of water. The water that evaporates gets sucked out of streams, ponds, and lakes.
Because there is so much water loss, the ponds, streams, and lakes are shallower and less
turbulent. That lack of turbulence means that less air is circulating to the water and the
dissolved oxygen is lessened. Water falls and other turbulence then plays a large role in
dissolved oxygen. The more there are, then the more oxygen can be dissolved in the
water. In stagnant ponds and lakes, the dissolved oxygen rates are extremely low due to
the fact that only the top of the water is being oxygenated by the air. On top of that, the
water might also be being heated which lowers the dissolved oxygen rate. That leaves
relatively no dissolved oxygen in the pond or lake if it is shallow enough. I believe that if
the water temperature is cool or cold, then the highest saturation will be present. I came
to this hypothesis by realizing how cold the ocean is and how well so many things live in
it; I may think it is freezing but the vast amount of organisms and life forms favor lots of
oxygen. Many factors can then affect photosynthesis and that does not even incorporate
organisms (biotic factors) in an area functioning together with all of the non-living
together, this refers to all of the cycles and processes working together to make a
community. Previously stated, a cycle can be observed in nature and that cycle consists of
plants producing oxygen, which is used by organisms in cellular respiration, and then
cellular respiration produces carbon dioxide. When organisms happen to die off, then
their carcasses lie on the ground to decompose. That decomposition then provides the
ground with nutrients that can be reused by other organisms and plants.
The same thing can be observed in aquatic environments. In the book Survival of
the Sickest they refer to the extremely rich deposit of nutrients that sits on the ocean
bottom. Scientists have even tried to construct experiments in which they surface these
nutrients and then growth flourishes upon them. The dissolved oxygen in the water
thanks to the decomposition promotes the life of plants that live in the water. Those plants
must then live within the photic zone, where sunlight reaches, in order to keep the
process of photosynthesis going and keeping the dissolved oxygen levels at a regulated
rate.
Procedure
2. Measure 5 cm from the bottom of the beakers and fill them with distilled water to
that line.
4. Measure the amount of dissolved oxygen in the sample with the dissolved oxygen
meter. In order to keep the water moving when measuring the Dissolved oxygen,
place the beaker on a mixing tray and insert a mixing magnet, set the mixing
setting to low. Record the data that you receive from the dissolved oxygen meter
5. The next beaker will need to be chilled to 4ºC. To do this, fill a large beaker up
half way with water and then add about 10 cubes of ice. Place the original beaker
in the large one and insert a thermometer to make sure that the temperature is
correct.
6. Repeat step 4
7. The final beaker will need to be slightly heated to 30ºC. Place beaker on warming
tray and put the setting very low. We do not want to overheat the water. Place a
thermometer in the beaker and wait until the temperature reaches 30ºC.
8. Repeat step 4
3. Cover the second jar with nothing, this will be you 100%
light jar
4. Cover the third jar with three screens, allowing only 25%
2. On the next day, obtain Elodea from the class store of it.
3. Make sure that the elodea is as dry as possible and then measure out exactly one
gram.
5. Fill the jars with water completely; there should be no air bubbles present.
6. Once the jars are filled, empty them back out into separate beakers.
8. Return the water back to the jars again. If air bubbles are present then top off the
10. Place both the 100% and the 25% bottles underneath a light source.
11. After about 24 hours, measure the dissolved oxygen content again.
Discussion
oxygen, that finding should have been the same throughout everyone’s experiment.
Instead of remeasuring the dissolved oxygen in each sample, we simply took the average
of two samples that were gathered. Our results after 24 hours were in good display and
the correlation can be seen on Graphs 1&2. The skew that had been seen is at 2% light
in relation to both Gross Productivity and Net Productivity. The explanation for this could
be attributed to human error. For the most part, a positive correlation is present in our
samples and it can be understood that the more light that is present, then the more gross
and net productivity is also present. This almost confirms that primary productivity is
dependent on light. 100% light had almost the highest productivity, while 2% had the
lowest productivity. With further investigation and repetition of the experiment, a more
conclusive correlation can be found since the 25% light is most likely due to human error.
Graphs 1&2 show a positive correlation but there is actually no net gain that was
produced. If this is the actual case then organisms would not be able to easily survive
around elodea since it is just soaking up nutrients and not giving anything back. The data
represented may again be due to human error. Net productivity should be more than 0%.
Looking at it a different way, 100% light may not be suitable for Elodea. This plant
grows in the depths of water and therefore never really receives 100% of light. If it did
happen to, then Elodea would thrive to out of control numbers, and lead to the thriving of
many other organisms as well. The growth of lots of plants and organisms also mean that
there is going to be a lot of death of lots of plants and organisms. This leads to what is
known as eutrophication, or a natural process that occurs in an aging lake or pond as that
body of water gradually builds up its concentration of plant nutrients and thus depletes
will choke off the life in the pond and algal blooms will be prevalent.
If out results were absolutely true, then all of our light environments would not be
able to support life. Like stated before, a negative net productivity means that there is less
than no productivity. The sources of food and oxygen would be depleted at astronomical
oxygen also increases; this clearly goes against my hypothesis that states the complete
opposite. Outside sources, including LabBench, clearly and concisely stated that when
temperature increases then the amount of dissolved oxygen decreases. (LabBench) Our
experiments somewhere went awry and should be redone many times in order to properly
use the part of the scientific method that states that repetition must take place.
When organisms respire outside of water, they only use 1 to 2 percent in the
process. Air encompasses the earth and is very easily attainable since it is such large
abundance. Oxygen diffuses 300,000 times faster in air than water. That information
provides the basis for the hypothesis that the reason fish spend 15% of their energy to
move water over their gills is because oxygen is so much harder to access under water.
The density of water compared to air, is incredibly higher, meaning that more energy
Different sources of water provide much different results in the dissolved oxygen
content. It mainly depends on the environment that the water is in to provide the
explanation of why the dissolved oxygen is so much or so little. Lakes are huge, slow
moving bodies of water that are quiet and serene. These adjectives are not good for
dissolved oxygen. Since they are so slow moving and untouched, the rate of water mixing
with the air is incredibly low. When looking at a stream, one notices the small waterfalls,
all of the rocks that get in the way of the watery path and other sticks and obstacles the
water must get around. Every one of those things provides the water with another
aeration technique and allows the water to have a higher dissolved oxygen reading.
If the readings for dissolved oxygen concentration of water samples were taken at
various times in the day, I would expect the water samples taken at 7:00 a.m. to be the
least saturated with oxygen. At night, when photosynthesis is not taking place, plants
must use cellular respiration to survive. While doing that, they suck up the dissolved
oxygen in the water since it is required for cellular respiration. At 5:00 p.m.,
photosynthesis has been happening all day which means high dissolved oxygen rates.
When looking at the two fish in the separate jars with varying amounts of water, I
notice that A looks like it is pretty well off. The downfall of choice A is the surface area
to volume ratio. He may survive for longer without much movement but when his oxygen
resources are used up it would be hard for him to overcome the oxygen debt that the
water is in. Choice B is much more promising. The surface area to volume looks to be
about 1:1 and that is great for the diffusion of oxygen in the water. If the oxygen starts to
run out, then the natural tendency of a fish is to flop around. The flopping around
stimulates the water and provides even more surface area for the diffusion of water, just
within a given environment (AquaPlant). As seen with the jalapeno and tomato outbreak
of salmonella, bacteria and fertilizers run off into water supplies including streams and
lakes (Science In the News). This runoff provides the grounds for Eutrophication. When
the nutrients are low, and phosphorus is high, algal blooms start to form and choke the
life out of the organisms that use aerobic respiration. (Eutrophication: Wikipedia)
With mistakes found in the experiment, sources of error are prevalent. The errors
that occur the most are from human interaction but are usually going to be that way many
experiments. Other sources of error are small but can play a large role in our experiments.
The elodea that had been used in our experiments was not all from the same source. They
had been collected and then put into a container where we had to sift through them and
find random pieces of elodea to equal a gram in each bottle. That method was not very
scientific for a couple of reasons. The first is that the leaf size had not been the same
throughout the bottles and could have lead to increased photosynthesis in one jar that had
big leaves and little photosynthesis in another jar because the leaves were small and the
were supposed to measure the dissolved oxygen while it was at specific temperatures.
This could not be accomplished because as soon as the beaker had been removed from
the ice or the hot plate, they migrated rapidly towards room temperature, even by as
much as 5ºC.
The light regulation in our experiments did not seem fitting to me. There was no
way to be certain that 2% of the light was actually penetrating to the Elodea plant. An
idea for a future experiment would be regulating the actual light source instead of
regulating the coverage of a bottle where there is no way to know how much actual light
is getting to the plant. We would also need a light gauge to be absolutely sure that the
light is at the correct intensity for our experiment and to be very precise with our
measurements.
For another experiment, we could step up the previous one but with more
variables to consider. We would set up the different light intensities, but with a multitude
of different color lights. This would show us which light color is the most easily
absorbable by the chlorophyll pigment that photosynthesis uses and at what intensity the
References
<http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/dipproj2/en/fieldbook/bod.shtml>.
Campbell, Neil A., and Jane B. Reece. Biology: AP Edition. 7th ed. San Francisco, CA:
"Dissolved Oxygen." AquaPlant. 2008. Texas Agrilife Extension Service. 25 Sept. 2008
<http://aquaplant.tamu.edu/contents/dissolved_oxygen.htm>.
"Dissolved Oxygen." 2007. Institute of Ecosystem Studies. 25 Sept. 2008
<http://www.ecostudies.org/images/education/chp/dissolved_oxygen.pdf>.
<http://duedall.fit.edu/ocn1010eng/week13-2bio3.htm>.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eutrophication>.
Sept. 2008
<http://books.google.com/books?id=7cobl_npga4c&printsec=copyright&dq=lab+
12+dissolved+oxygen#ppp4,m1>.
<http://www.phschool.com/science/biology_place/labbench/lab12/primary.html>.
<http://www.saskschools.ca/curr_content/biology20/unit2/unit2module1lesson3.h
tm>.