Like many years before, YEE again took part in the international World Water Monitoring Challenge. WWMC is an initiative which aims to raise awareness on water pollution issues and involve people in water resource protection. People are encouraged to carry out basic monitoring and thereby help to assess the state of water bodies worldwide.

On the 27th of October YEE team headed to Příbram, a picturesque town 60 kilometres south of Prague. Příbram spreads along the Litavka river and is surrounded by several smaller hills (the so called Brdy range). One of them, named Svatá Hora (Holy Mountain), has a baroque church and monastery on top and is a famous pilgrimage site. In addition, the town is known for its mining heritage.

We measured the quality of 5 artificial ponds located in Příbram. The latter were created as a result of dams built on streams flowing through town. It was cloudy at first but the skies soon cleared up a bit and enabled us to enjoy some good ol’ Příbram sunshine during our monitoring day.

Although all ponds are connected with the same stream we observed differences in some parameters:

Air and water temperature are already showing signs of longer nights and the coming of winter. Oxygen levels in all samples were quite low and according to WWMC, such water bodies are not capable in sustaining life on a long term. Nonetheless, two carps swimming in the Kaňka pond filled us up with hope. In addition, all samples scored neutral on the acidity/basicity tests - values were around 7 on a scale from 0 (acidic) to 14 (basic). Apart from Fialův rybnik all other ponds we visited had lower turbidity values, which means that water in them was clearer (the higher the number, the hazier the water).

After the monitoring we had a stroll around town and visited one of the local vegetarian restaurants. Following YEE policies we also took a train back to Prague. With sights on fields, forests, villages and castles our monitoring day slowly came to an end.