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Soil & Water Conservation Society of Metro Halifax (SWCSMH)
September 17, 2006 
Contents:
The need to use accredited laboratories
Our sampling protocols
Chemical vs Biological monitoring in limnology
A selection of tests performed by laboratories
Phosphorus species and caution
Chlorophyll a (Cha)
Secchi disk (SD)
Sampling modus operandi for standard limnological investigations (OECD)
Statistical tools
List of Periodic Table Elements Sorted by Element Name
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Narrative on water quality
The need to use accredited laboratories
- The need to use laboratories accredited by the Standards Council of Canada, a federal Crown corporation; accredited laboratories in Canada, and the list of registered tests that each lab has undergone proficiency testing for!
- Policy on the Accreditation of Laboratories-- Nova Scotia Dept. of Environment & Labour
Phosphorus species
Also see Management of Phosphorus (Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment-CCME), and miscellaneous
- A note of caution: In freshwaters, it is important that TP is measured to one (1) µg/l (i.e., 1 microgram/litre) sensitivity. Indeed, we also understand there are some leading research laboratories elsewhere in North America and Western Europe which can analyze TP to even higher sensitivity, e.g., 0.25 µg/l!
- We place the above caution especially since a significant number of monitoring conducted by various consultants and submitted to the HRM has been woefully inadequate from a limnological perspective. Over a whole decade or longer, many TP values had been reported as, for e.g., < 0.1 mg/l (i.e., < 100 µg/l) or sometimes as 0.02 or 0.03 mg/l which are of little value in any authentic limnological assessment. Hence, we request all field samplers, e.g., engineers, ecologists, biologists to consult us and/or other limnologists for further clarification and scientific rationale, if needed. The proper way of reporting is, as an example, 0.023 mg/l (or 23 µg/l).
- Phosphorus analytical inaccuracies!
- Caution re overestimation of Phosphate by orders of magnitude!
Statistical tools
Ordination Methods for Ecologists, Oklahoma State University
Correspondence Analysis, StatSoft, Inc.
Multidimensional Scaling, StatSoft, Inc.
Multivariate Statistics
Ordination-related terms
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