Recently my friend, Farmer John, called me. We were talking about his farm and he explained to me that his irrigation system for his farm was recently shutdown due to a problem with the freshwater source. Farmer John explained that he would not be able to use the stream water he had been relying on due to low water volumes from the dry summer. He said he could only take some water from the stream as other wildlife like salmon depended on it to swim to their spawning grounds. Farmer John said the state is only allowing him to capture a small amount of water. He’s worried about the crops he’s planted. However, I told him why not use some of the saltwater from the ocean nearby. I said, “You could mix it with the freshwater you’re allowed to harvest and conserve your freshwater and grow your crops!” I told him we’ve been experimenting with different levels of salinity. We could study the problem and share our findings. I said, “We’ll find the range of tolerance for the crops.” He said, “That would be great!”

Well, you guys have heard the story. Now, we need to think about the experimental design. What do you think we can set-up to help Farmer John determine how salinity could affect his crops?

What we decided for our experimental design:

•  Create 4 different saltwater solutions. Label one with 0, another 1, … 2, and 4.
•  Set-up a tray of crops with 4 different cups. Label one with 0 another 1, … 2, and 4.
•  In each cup place 4 corn  seeds, 4 pea seeds, 3 barley seeds and 3 radish seeds.
•  Plant all seeds in the cups with about a cup of soil.
• Water each cup with 50 ml from the saltwater solution that’s the same as the cup label.
• Observe what happens.

10/24/11

Dear Dr. Brian,

We’re writing you to tell you what we have found from our brine shrimp studies. We have enjoyed working with the shrimp. We have some good and bad news for you.

We took some cups with 150 ml of water and placed different amounts of salt in them. We placed a mini scoop of brine shrimp in each cup. Then we observed to see how they would live and grow.

First, the good news is we found that brine shrimp did very well in cups with 2-4 scoops (5ml) of salt per 150ml of water. So, the range of tolerance was 2-4 scoops of salt per 150 ml of water. The optimum, or best, level was 2 scoops of salt per 150ml of water.

The bad news is the cups with 0 scoops of salt and 6 scoops had no brine shrimp eggs hatch. So this means you have a serious problem if the water level goes down and the salinity continues to go up.

One more bit of good news is that eggs that didn’t hatch in cups with 0 and 6 scoops were found to be viable if the salinity was changed. So, maybe it’s not too late to make things better at Mono Lake.

Sincerely,

Mr. Magill and The Portable People

PS What are your thoughts about our viablility findings?

Here’s the letter I received last year from Dr.Salina Brian that I had mentioned previous to our work with the brine shrimp. Now that we have data for her, how should we present it to her?

9/25/10

Dear Mr. Magill,

As I told you in our conversation on the telephone, I’ve been studying the bird populations around Mono Lake. This is a lake in Northern California. The lake has been drying up and getting smaller. As a result, Mono Lake has become a salt lake. As the level of the lake falls, the concentration of salt, or salinity has increased. This environmental change might be affecting the organisms in the area. For instance, the lake has small organisms called brine shrimp. The birds that migrate to the lake depend on them. If the lake continues to get saltier, either because the lake is drying up or fresh water flowing into the lake is being reduced, the salty aquatic environment might have an effect on the shrimp.

I would be most grateful if your class chose to help me out on a research study. I’m trying to figure out if the salinity is an environmental factor that’s affecting the hatching of Mono Lake brine shrimp eggs. If so, I’ve sent you some brine shrimp eggs from Mono Lake to use for research.

Would your class be able to help to design an experiment that would contribute to my studies?

Sincerely,
Dr. Salina Brian