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Aquatic plants are not just a beautiful addition to gardens or aquariums. They have an essential role to play in balancing fragile ecosystems. Certain species can help indicate the water quality of local water bodies. Sumita Bhattacharya, a PhD student at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Envrionment has been studying how bioindicators can be used to study water quality. 

22 and 30 August 2020

Day 1 of the workshop was a hands-on activity where we learnt how to use aquatic plants to test the quality of water. The scope of using citizen science for data collection on plants abundance and diversity at various lakes of Bengaluru will also be discussed. 

Day 2 of this workshop was to learn more about this unique ability of aquatic plants; how certain species are indicators of good water quality, how others indicate poor water quality and how they have been used in various countries.

THINGS NEEDED

  • Large opaque plastic containers with wide open tops like home delivery food containers, preferably white or light in colour- 6-10 in number and same type

  • Fertilizer with know chemical composition or quantity of Nitrogen, such as NPK 20-20-20

  • Standard table/tea spoon

  • Tap water

  • Small floating aquatic plants like different types of duckweed, found in your neighbourhood lake along the shoreline

  • Open space with adequate sunlight like in an open balcony or terrace

  • Camera

  • Basic stationery (notebook, pen, pencil, eraser scale, scissors, paper cutter)

  • Square or rectangle thin and stiff cardboard sheet, about 3cm larger than the mouth of the plastic container

  • Paper pins or board pins

  • Thread spools of different size or colour

  • Cellotape or glue

  • Optional, but quite useful: 1mm A4 graph sheet (clear plastic sheet and fine tip permanent marker pen)

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About the Facilitator

Sumita Bhattacharyya is a PhD student at ATREE since 2019, Sumita Bhattacharyya is working on water pollution and monitoring of urban lakes in Bengaluru. She has done her under graduation from the University of Delhi in Botany and post graduation from the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun in Environment Management. Her interests lie in water pollution, monitoring water quality using bioindicators and citizen science engagement.

Thank you for visiting PHYTOPIA. We would love for you to share your thoughts and experience about this programme here!