What is WaterLogged?

Waterlogged is a citizen science project where people can participate by taking samples from surface water sources. We provide you with a bottle, and instructions on how to take the sample. Once you’ve taken the sample, we analyze it for organic matter, and put the information on the website where everyone can see differences in water quality between different sources.

What is organic matter?
Organic matter refers to a large and varied class of chemicals. In surface water, organic matter comes from the breakdown of plant material in the soil and water (such as leaves from the fall), as well as from microbes within the soil and the water itself as they feed on plant material. Water high in organic matter is highly coloured, often resembling a cup of tea left to steep.

Why do we care?
Organic matter is an important part of the global carbon cycle – more carbon is stored in the ocean and in terrestrial surface waters as organic matter than in the atmosphere. Organic matter acts as an ‘aquatic sunscreen’; water high in organic matter can have a brownish colour that lets less light into the water (meaning less energy for plants and microbes). Bacteria and other types of microbes (including algae) can also eat organic matter.

We worry about organic matter in our drinking water because high levels of organic matter can form disinfection byproducts when it is chlorinated, a class of chemicals that are regulated by the provincial government because they can cause different types of cancers.

Human activities can affect the amount of organic matter in surface water. We can produce and discharge water high in organic matter (through sewers, storm drains and agriculture); different types of land uses (like forest harvest) can also increase organic matter in surface waters. Water from different places can be naturally high in organic matter – for example, water from wetlands is often naturally high in organic matter.

We aim to look at how organic matter in different water sources around the Lower Mainland differs in terms of the amount of organic matter within, as well as what types of organic matter may be in the water. We hope that by getting a large number of samples from different locations, we can begin to see trends for human and natural sources of organic materials.