exact sampling area!

final water samples.

yesterday, friday, lucy and i decided to go and collect our final water samples from our designated area. we plan to test these tomorrow.

table of my soil results:

Site
pH level
Presence of salt
moisture content
Texture and colour
Parent material
One
6.99
2 drops - high
15%
Small particles – thick muddy clay. Dark brown, moist
Sandstone
Two
7.09
4 drops -medium
28%
Crusty material, lighter brown, average particles of minerals
Sandstone
Three
6.59
2 drops - high
19%
Dark brown in colour, fine particles, moist
Sandstone
Four
6.62
1 drop - high
11%
Lighter in colour, clay like look
sandstone

history time line of the gardens

before 1788
The local Aboriginal inhabitants, the Cadigal, used the tidal area along Woccanmagullyfor an initiation ground..
Early 1788
The Sydney Domain was set aside by Governor Phillip
April 1816
Charles Fraser arrives in the colony.
December 1816
Alan Cunningham arrives in the colony and appointed King’s Botanist.
c. 1816-1818
Wishing Tree planted where the Wollemi Pine now grows. It was removed in 1945 when unsafe.
1817
Francis Greenway’s Government Stables, now Conservatorium of Music, was started.
March 1817
Charles Fraser described as Colonial Botanist.
1817-1831
Charles Fraser, Colonial Botanist and Superintendent
March 1819
Fraser asks for botanical books to be sent from England, including Brown’s Prodromus. By 1820 Fraser had created a ‘botanic garden’, quite separate to the Governor’s kitchen garden nearby. January 1821
Fraser's duties includes being Superintendent of the Botanic Garden.
13 September 1831
Domain is opened for ‘carriages’, and effectively ‘open to the general public’.
Dec 1831
Fraser dies, aged 43.
Jan 1832-Dec 1832
John McLean acting Superintendent of Botanic Gardens.
1833-1837
Richard Cunningham, Colonial Botanist and Superintendent
1833
Richard Cunningham appointed Colonial Botanist and Superintendent
Allan Cunningham offered advice and oversaw Richard’s work.
April 1835
Richard Cunningham clubbed to death on the Bogan River in western NSW on Major Thomas Mitchell's expedition.
1837
Cunningham in poor health and died soon after returning from a collecting trip to New Zealand.
1847
Fig Tree Avenue planted.
1848-1896
Charles Moore, Director
Appointed when 27 years old, by Committee of Management, Director for 48 years
Introduced more regulations to keep out ‘all persons of reputed bad character …persons who are not cleanly and decently dressed … and all young persons not accompanied by some respectable adult’
1848
Directed the 11th Regiment Band to play in the Domain rather than the Gardens, as being more appropriate
1851
Started to deliver lectures on plants
1855
Moore brings in soil from Rose Bay to improve the garden for Azalea and Rhododendron
1856
First aviary opened in the Botanic Gardens, and this lasted until 1940. Other caged animals began to be introduced from 1862, to create Sydney's first zoo. The zoo lasted until 1883.
1857
Catalogue of plants in the Botanic Gardens produced in response to a recommendation in the management review of 1855: 3000 species of flowering plants and ferns (740 from NSW, 110 from Australia elsewhere, 1860 from overseas and 230 horticultural hybrids)
1870s
Moore replenishes trees in the Domain, especially planting figs - his signature tree.
1896
Moore dies
1896-1924
Joseph H. Maiden, Director
1924-1933
George Percy Darnell-Smith, Director
October 1933
Darnell-Smith retires
1933-1945
Administration split - Gardens administered by Ward, followed by Hawkey, Herbarium administered by Cheel, followed by Anderson
June 1970
Mair retires after seven years as Director
Johnson acting Director until October 1970
1988
Rose Garden opens in Royal Botanic Gardens
1990
Tropical Centre opens in Royal Botanic Gardens
1993
Fernery opens in Royal Botanic Gardens
1994
Herb Garden opens in Royal Botanic Gardens
1997
HSBC Oriental Garden opens in Royal Botanic Gardens
1998
Rare and Threatened Plants Garden opens in Royal Botanic Gardens
1999
Cadi Jam Ora: First Encounters Garden opens
18 February 2004
Appointed Executive Director
Specialist in freshwater algae
2006
Palace Rose Garden in Royal Botanic Gardens opens
2007
Appointed Government Botanist


http://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/welcome_to_bgt/royal_botanic_gardens/history

my hypothesis

I believe that humans play a massive part in the quality of the water and soil in the Woolloomooloo area and also to the pollution. I believe that there will be high levels of pollution and also salt content.

it has now being proved that there was a lot of salt and human beings play a huge part in this.

problems i have come across

being a boarder mkaes it hard to get my samples. boarders have a set time that they can leave the boarding house and also have to be back. with this in place, it is hard to ghet all my samples in the space of an hour and a quater. also, with lucy also being a boarder she gets her samples from a different locatioin to myself. we have to go in twos when leaving the school.
when collecting my water seals were based in one of the ponds that i did, which made collecting my water very dangerous.
i am going to get more water samples tomorrrow.
it has being difficult with only being limited to a section of the park.

hazards sheet!

soil testing:

pH level:
site one - 6.99
site two - 7.09
site three - 6.59
site four - 6.62

presence of salt:
site one - 2 drops - high
site two - 4 drops - medium
site three - 2 drops - high
site four - 1 drop - high

moisture content:
site one - 15%
site two - 28%
site three - 19%
site four - 11%

parent material:
site one - sandstone
site two - sandstone
site three - sandstone
site four - sandstone

water testing

these are the results for my water testings:
presence of salt:
site one - 1 drop - high
site two - 1 drop - high
site three - 1 drop - high
site 4 - 3 drops - medium

presence of phosphates:
site one - 5
site two - 10
site three - 25
site four - 10


turbidity:
site one - yes
site two - yes
site three - yes
site four - no

pH:
site one - 6.03
site two - 6.26
site three - 7.50
site four - 6.80

all the water is relatively polluted due to the area that it is it. when boates, algea and animals and left of rubbish and waste been thrown in to the water and the waters not being maintained very much.

water samples photos!

these are the locations that i had collected my water samples from.

i have been told to change this so i will do this again on friday.

humans impacting on sydney's water.

this is an interview that is discussing Sydney's water, it is showing the great amount of impact that humans have on it.
Sydney pollution prompts fishing banReporter:
Jonathan Harley
MAXINE McKEW: Well something nobody argues about - even before the arrival of the First Fleet, Sydney Harbour was a bountiful source of seafood for its original inhabitants. Ever since the first days of the colony, fishing has been an intrinsic part of life in the harbour city. But now, Sydneysiders have been told that none of the seafood in the harbour is safe to eat. Commercial fishing has been banned and recreational anglers have been told not to eat their catch for fear of unsafe levels of poisonous dioxins. Ironically, Sydney's centrepiece waterway has been dramatically cleaned up over the past decade, but the invisible legacy of toxic industries is proving to be much more serious than previously thought. Jonathan Harley reports. TONYIANNI, COMMERCIAL FISHER: After school, I went fishing. I enjoy it; it's the best harbour in the world.
CHARLIE IANNI, COMMERCIAL FISHER: Just going in the water, catching fish, prawns, everything else. That's what I love about it. We have our own little business and I was happy.
JONATHAN HARLEY: While the city sleeps, brothers Charlie and Tony Ianni cast their nets into Sydney Harbour. They've been doing it for more than 20 years, as their father did before them, but Sydney Harbour provides their livelihood no more.
CHARLIE IANNI: It's destroyed us now. We've been going fishing for years. My dad's been going fishing. We've taken over the business. Now it's just stopped us. It's gone now.
JONATHAN HARLEY: The first warning signs for the Ianni family came last month when prawn trawling was halted. The bottom dwellers were found to have toxic levels four to five times acceptable international standards. Then, yesterday, the New South Wales Government confirmed the morning headlines.
IAN McDONALD, NSW PRIMARY INDUSTRIES MINISTER: This morning, following advice from the expert panel and the New South Wales Food Authority, I've instituted a ban of a temporary nature on commercial fishing in Sydney Harbour.
JONATHAN HARLEY: The ban casts doubt over some of Sydney's most cherished traditions. Not just of commercial fishing, but also among the generations of families who've spent their weekends tossing a line over the edge of a tinny or off a jetty. While the ban is brand new, its cause is as old as the industries that once lined Sydney's waterways.
JOE WOODWARD, NSW DEPT OF ENVIRONMENT AND CONSERVATION: You've get to remember we're living with a legacy of 100 years of unregulated industrial activities, with all sorts of nasty chemicals and discharges to the Parramatta River and the harbour.
JONATHAN HARLEY: Sydney Harbour and its marine life have been poisoned by a group of long-lasting toxic compounds known as dioxins. They're by-products of now-banned pesticides, such as DDT, produced for decades in Homebush Bay in the upper reaches of the harbour. Today, dioxins' dangers are all too well known.
JOE WOODWARD : Well, dioxin is a contaminate that was in herbicides and it is long-lasting in the environment. It bio-accumulates and it is carcinogenic, which means it can cause cancer in people.
DANNY KENNEDY, CAMPAIGNS MANAGER, GREENPEACE AUSTRALIA PACIFIC: These are things that you really do not want to be messing with in your backyards.
JONATHAN HARLEY: Ever since Sydney was chosen to host the 2000 Olympics on the banks of Homebush Bay, Greenpeace has been pressing to clean it up. Only now are some of those dirtiest sites being remediated, underwritten by Sydney's obsession with waterfront real estate. Only now is it being acknowledged that the poisons in this bay have spread so far.
DANNY KENNEDY: We generated the evidence to show that this was one of the world's top three contaminated sites for dioxin contamination in the late 90s, prior to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. So, of course it's no surprise to us to learn that this dioxin has now spread from right up the Parramatta River out to Sydney's heads.
MORRIS IEMMA, NSW PREMIER: Further testing must take place and that's what is going to happen.
JONATHAN HARLEY: Today, New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma made brief doorstop remarks, but both the state ministers for fisheries and the environment declined our requests for an interview. Meanwhile, the Department of Environment and Conservation maintains it is cleaning up the contaminated sites, including the worst of the toxic sediment on the bottom of Homebush Bay.
JOE WOODWARD: There are 30 sites up and down Parramatta River that we've tackled and many, many of those have been cleaned up and we are left with the most difficult ones now to actually finish off.
DAVID KENNEDY: This is also contaminated.
JONATHAN HARLEY: Greenpeace's Danny Kennedy is sceptical about the extent of that promised clean-up and the government's initial timeframe of three months for a ban on fishing.
DAVID KENNEDY: It's a little too little, too late to put a three-month ban on commercial fishing when people have been exposed to these sources of pollution for decades. That's a big problem. Realistically a three-month ban on commercial fishing is not going to do it.
JONATHAN HARLEY: It may be that those most exposed to any long-term health risks are the commercial fishers themselves, who've relied on their own catch to feed their families.
TONY IANNI: Yeah, I always eat seafood. I eat my prawns, my fish. Yeah. I've been eating them for a lifetime. My family - I've got two young boys and they always eat prawns, too. They've been eating prawns since they were two years old. Yeah, we love the seafood.
JONATHAN HARLEY: Whatever the long-term health impacts may be for the Iannis and the other 21 commercial operators on Sydney Harbour, the immediate threat is to their businesses. The State Government is non-committal on the question of compensation. In the meantime, the Ianni tradition is reduced to a day-to-day existence. The prawns, which recently would earn them $28 a kilo, today only sell as bait.
TONY IANNI: Oh, we only get $6 for them, $6 to $8. It's not worth going fishing. We want Homebush Bay cleaned up or compensation. So, I've got to look for another job and it's going to be really hard. I've been working in the harbour for 20 years, so it's going to be really hard.

writing report

last night i had starting writing up my final submission - scientific report.
i have included the history of both the water areas and gardens. i have gathered information of a various amounts of internet sites.
on friday afternooon me and lucy are going to get my final set of water samples and finsih my testing and complete the remainder of my assignment.
with testing the different soil and water samples, i had noticed that there was a huge difference wiht each of them in the sense of pollution, salts and phosphates. this has made my testing more interesting and fun to work on.

new location

blogger has not been working for the past couple of days, so i have been unable to post and blogs.

recently ms B told me to change my location, due to already looking at it in class and on a class excusion. i have now found my new location which opens up more of the park for me to take soils from and get a better variety of answers:

i have taken my soil samples from different allocated spots throughout the park all the way up to the opera house. i have also done the same with my water samples. i have collected all my different soil and water samples. i have aslo tested them, at lunch times, class times and free periods this past week.

background information

this information is a breif summary of what occures in the area that i have chosen etcThe Finger Wharf or Woolloomooloo Wharf is a wharf in Woolloomooloo Bay, Sydney, Australia. The structure is the largest timbered-piled building in the world and was completed in 1915. During its working life for around 70 years it mainly handled the export of wool, but also acted as a staging point for troop deployment to the World Wars as well as a disembarking point for new migrants arriving in Australia.The wharf was built by the Sydney Harbour Trust between 1911 and 1915 with the charter to bring order to Sydney Harbour's foreshore facilities.[2] The Trust's Engineer-In-Chief, Henry Walsh, designed the massive waterfront building.[3]The Finger Wharf was an operational working wharf for much of the 20th century. But by the 1970s, new container ports with larger wharfing facilities and cruise liner terminals around the city meant the usage of the wharf declined. By the 1980s the wharf lay derelict and empty and in 1987, the state government decided to demolish the Wharf.[3]A new marina and resort complex was approved to replace the wharf in Woolloomooloo Bay, but when demolition work was due to begin in January 1991, locals blocked entrance to the site.[4] Unions imposed a Green ban which stopped demolition crews from undertaking work.[4]\this information was provided fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_Wharf

Post one

Yesterday afternoon i decided to actually start my assiegnment, up until now i have had an idea of what i wanted to do, however, i am now trying to locate a map and hopfully collect samples to start testing on.As i am a boader i thouhgt the most logical area for me to carry out my testing is the wooloomooloo wharf/harbour area for my water samples, and the botanical gardens for my soil.http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.866541,151.22181&spn=0.008267,0.019999&z=16the above link is a satellite picture of where i am going to be testing for my water sampleshttp://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.865221,151.220682&spn=0.000517,0.00125&z=20the above link is a close up of where i will be testing. I am currently unsure as to whether i need to have differnt locations for the samples of not. but regardless, this will be my first sample.as it is a wharf, when testing the water i will need to take into consideration the pollution due to boats and cruisers, also the impact of fishing and as it is oppostie a naval base, the impact that may have on the water. For my secound water samples i am aiming to perhpas focus on the harbour and collect samples from one side of the operah house, and then on the other side near circular key, and assess the impact of ferry's on native life.http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.857933,151.216168&spn=0.004134,0.009999&z=17The above link is an sattelie image of where i want to focus for my secound set of water sampleshttp://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.857999,151.216094&spn=0.000517,0.00125&z=20and the above link is a zoomed in image of where i aim to test for me secound set of water samples. Although i have not done a great deal on my assigement i think that this was significant as i have finally started to assign certain places of the immediate area to test and consider what effects the surroundings may have on the samples. Within my introduction i have to discuss the topography, geology and human impact, along with background info on my chosen site... however i am having difficulty finding infomation on that discussess the wooloomooloo wharf...

for me to be able to collect my samples, the water within the wharf needs to be reasonably low tide. Also, for more accuracy i could test the soils a number of times to get an aeverage. however i dont think time will permit. I aim to first of all preview were i plan to collect my samples from.

Botenical Gardens, Wooloomooloo Wharf

This is where i have decided to collect my soil and what samples from.