About Us
The St. Anne’s-Belfield Environmental Statistics Senior Seminar is a field-based class that combines environmental science and statistics, specifically researching local freshwater aquatic life. The class has accumulated data over six years that has contributed to the much larger project of attempting to save an endangered species. This class has a main goal of determining the ideal habitat for the James River spiny mussel (JRSM), in order to possibly introduce them to more bodies of water and reverse the decline in the JRSM populations. Mussels are indicator species of the quality of the water that makes up their environment. In order to determine the ideal levels of each variable in which the James River Spiny mussel thrives, we tested the following variables of different bodies of water are: nitrates, ammonium, pH, dissolved oxygen (DO), biological oxygen demand (BOD), turbidity, phosphate, temperature, flow rate, conductivity, and benthic levels.
Our Work
Mussels
Water Data
Other Experiments
Data and Conclusions
We monitored the population of mussels in a variety of rivers that contain the endangered James River Spineymussel.
To understand the health of the rivers and the ideal habitat for the James River Spinymussel, we studied, we collected chemical data.
When not looking at mussel populations, our class performed a variety of other experiments to learn more about the effects of different chemical levels on aquatic life.
We analyzed the data we collected from the water and mussel surveys to give a summary of the creeks.
Photo Gallery
