WATER QUALITY MONITORING USING CITIZEN SCIENTISTS THE CASE OF MEKI RIVER: DATA COMPARISON BETWEEN CITIZEN SCIENTISTS AND CONVENTIONAL METHOD

Abstract

Water quality monitoring was conducted using citizen scientists since, there is lack of water quality information of water bodies, which makes it difficult to identify changes and discover early pollution signs across the world. This problem is widely seen in Ethiopia. The aim of this study was by using citizen scientists to analyses water quality of Meki River and check their results accuracy with conventional method. In the meantime, identify the suitability of the water for irrigation and spatial variation of Meki River undertaken in the area. Water samples were collected from Meki, Katar, Ziway Lake and shallow groundwater from December 2019 to September 2020. During this time citizen scientist collected weekly and monthly for conventional method. Water quality parameters: Water temperature, turbidity, ammonia, phosphate, nitrate, nitrite, total alkalinity, total hardiness and pH were analyzed by both citizen scientist and conventional method. From the analysis results, the accuracy of the citizen scientist was in good agreement with 83.1% of PO43-, 86.7% of NO3-N, 94.8% of pH and 77.1 of NH3-N when they analyzed standard solutions. The field analyzed results of the citizen scientist with conventional method were only significantly different from each other with ammonia, turbidity and total alkalinity whereas the other six parameters had no significantly different. Thus, citizen scientist can monitor and collect accurate water quality data. In the meantime, the water suitability for irrigation and special variation on the river was investigated. From the results, the surface water was under the permissible limit of FAO and there is significantly high level of ammonia and turbidity at the sample site downstream of the Meki Town, these could be there were observed open defection around the town and sand mining activities. The water bodies can be used for irrigation but pollution sources should be avoided to reduce further quality decline