Following our tradition, YEE office team took part in the international World Water Monitoring Challenge, a campaign which aims to raise awareness on water pollution issues and invites people to take part in water monitoring activities.

This year we travelled to Brandýs nad Labem-Stará Boleslav, a lovely pair of towns about 30 km northeast from Prague divided by the Elbe river. We chose this location for two reasons: the first, the area is extremely rich in rivers and lakes so that we could monitor four different locations. The second reason is that both towns were absolutely lovely - in particular, the Romanesque St. Wenceslas basilica and the baroque Church of the Assumption of Mary confer the cities a touch of class and elegance - and they are surrounded by luxuriant woods where, in autumn, shades of brown, red, yellow and green create a magnificent atmosphere. We have also been very lucky with the weather: after a misty early morning, the sun began to shine and made our promenade, together with the landscape around us, particularly pleasant.

But let's go back to our monitoring! Here are the results we collected:

 
What can we deduce from our data?

• Both the water and air temperature reveal the coming of autumn even if, as mentioned above, the day was lovely and became warmer at late morning.
• The dissolved oxygen (part of oxygen per million parts water) was, in all samples, pretty low comparing to WWMC parameters. That means that the monitored water bodies are incapable of sustaining life on a long term.
• Ph (acidity or basicity of a fluid) values are all regular with the only exception of Probostska jezera which waters are slightly too alkaline.
• Turbidity values (the cloudiness or haziness of a fluid) were regular as well, with the only exception of Probostska jezera which waters were pretty murky.

After the monitoring, we had a very tasty pizza in a nice Italian restaurant and enjoyed the warm sunshine just next to Brandy nad Labem`s castle.
What can we say more? The day couldn't really be better and the time for learning, working and enjoying was harmoniously balanced.
One last curiosity: did you know that Brandys nad Labem-Stará Boleslav is the city with the longest name in the Czech Republic?

Written by: Cristian Riva