{"id":71,"date":"2014-06-03T22:52:19","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T05:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/?page_id=71"},"modified":"2014-07-07T15:45:17","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T22:45:17","slug":"analysis","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once we get your sample, we will analyze it for both the amount (or concentration)\u00a0and type of organic matter present. To do this, we use spectrophotometry<\/a> \u2013 a type of\u00a0analysis that uses light to find out how much and what kind of organic matter is\u00a0present within your sample.<\/p>\n

To determine the concentration of organic matter in your sample, we first filter it to\u00a0make sure we are looking at only the organic matter that is dissolved (not the\u00a0sediment or dirt).<\/p>\n

Next, we use absorbance spectrophotometry<\/a> to find the concentration (amount) of\u00a0organic matter. Sounds fancy, but this simply means passing light through the\u00a0sample, and looking at how much light is absorbed by organic matter within the\u00a0sample. The more light is absorbed at specific wavelengths, the higher the amount of\u00a0organic matter in the sample.<\/p>\n

We then use fluorescence spectrophotometry<\/a> to look at what kinds of organic\u00a0matter are present. Like absorbance, this technique passes light through the sample.\u00a0Certain types of organic matter will take this light, and re-emit it\u00a0at lower\u00a0energies (just like fluorescent lights emit light after you give them electricity by\u00a0flicking a light switch). By looking at the fluorescence of organic matter over a large\u00a0range of wavelengths, we can begin to see patterns that correspond to specific types\u00a0of organic matter. This can tell us where the organic matter came from, such as from\u00a0plant material within the soil, or from microbes within water.<\/p>\n

This is our fluorescence instrument:<\/p>\n

\"Fluorescence

Photo credit: Ashlee Jollymore<\/p><\/div>\n

This is what we see when we analyze a water sample for fluorescence:<\/p>\n

\"EEMSpicture\"Both\u00a0how much\u00a0and what type of organic matter present within water\u00a0can be affected by human impacts upstream of where the sample was taken. By comparing between different sites, we hope to see\u00a0how impacted different sites are, what this could mean in terms of ecosystem function and human health, and if we want\u00a0to use the water for things like swimming and drinking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once we get your sample, we will analyze it for both the amount (or concentration)\u00a0and type of organic matter present. To do this, we use spectrophotometry \u2013 a type of\u00a0analysis that uses light to find out how much and what kind of organic matter is\u00a0present within your sample. To determine the concentration of organic matter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22898,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-71","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22898"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/waterlogged\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}