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Following on from: Choosing sampling areas in urban context
Sterilize your container before sampling:
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in the oven at 170°C for 1 hour,
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in an autoclave at 120°C for 20 min, or
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in a pressure cooker with a little water for 40 minutes after the valve has been turned on.
Warning:
If you follow this procedure make sure you only use glass containers that can withstand this treatment. If you do not have this type of glassware, we also describe methods to take samples with plastic bottles. Keep in mind that the documentation of your protocol and precise information on the sampling conditions is more important than the attempts to sterilize the tools. A laboratory can process your samples if and only if you are rigorous on these points. If you perform analyses yourself, they will only be of value if you are rigorous on this point of documentation and precise information.
Warning:Carry your material packed in a chest cooler or a cooler bag to the sampling site in order to protect it.
For water samples taken from rivers, wells, etc. attach the sterile bottle to a rope, weight your device so that it submerges below the surface. Hold the bottle in the water with a pole to avoid your body being in contact with the water.
Water samples should be poured into sterile single-use bottles or vials (cleaned with disinfectant if necessary). Vials containing samples for analysis shouldn’t be completely filled – 3/4 full will be sufficient. Samples should be stored until analysis at 2° to 5 °C. If a chest cooler is used during field work, avoid exposing it to sunlight. Ensure the traceability of a sample (identification of the vial: date, time, title of your mission, initials of the persons, reference of the applied protocol, GPS coordinates of the sampling site). Samples should be analysed preferably within 8 hours of collection, otherwise within 24 hours.
Here is an example of an aquatic sampling form:
bioinvestigation-sampling-form-english.pdf (Free Art License 1.3)
Here is an example of an aquatic sampling form:In a notebook, write down everything you do and how you do it. You can also equip yourself with an aquarium test kit and conduct tests for pH, carbon dioxide, iron, etc. in the watercourse that will provide even greater precision to your operations. You can also use a thermometer and a Secchi disk.
Image of a Secchi disk. Source: Secchi disk - Wikipedia
If you do not have glass material for sampling, you can use plastic containers or sterile bottles that you can get from websites such as DeltaLab.
In order to minimise the cost of acquiring materials and also to initiate meetings that could result in collaboration or help in your investigations, you can ask for donations of materials (bottles, glass containers, syringes, pipettes, pH kits, latex gloves, etc.) in pharmacies or a fire brigade or an infirmary near you. You will certainly find people ready to help you.These institutions often have kits with professional equipment that are subject to very strict regulations and whose date of use has expired. The kits are packed in plastic to maintain sterility for a certain period of time. Laboratories are subject to very strict rules for the use of packaged kits. Even if professionals can no longer use them after the expiry date, you can do so if the packaging has not been damaged. Indeed, laboratories also carry out analysis of samples taken by citizens and stored in mineral water bottles. Though using kits that are still sterile but whose expiry date has passed makes the job simpler.
As with soil samples, you may consider using your water samples to detect the presence of dissolved metals. For a detailed guide, see the protocol established by the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Environment and the Fight Against the Climate Change (Québec, Canada). You can also watch this video on the technique of taking water samples from rivers or create a protocol for the waste inventory in rivers and on riverbanks, inspired by Riverine Input from the Surfrider Foundation Europe.
Safety First!
For your safety and that of the people you work with, remember that, for example, in the extreme cases that you suspect radioactivity in the water or a pollutant that causes high risk for humans, you must provide suitable, automated and secure means of collection.
See also Radiation detected in the Niger River
Source : Water, Radioactivity and Environment. SFRP / Environnemental section, December 3-4, 2014. “Prélèvements d’eau dans l’environnement: de la théorie a la pratique”, Fabrice Leprieur, Benoît Philippot and all
S4b-Fabrice_LEPRIEUR.pdf (142.6 KB)
Safety First!
Using river plants as markers
When taking water or plant samples from rivers or riverbanks, you must take precautions and have a clear methodology. Plants in these environments can be used for further tracks of your investigation or as evidence of the recent or distant past.
Be careful when taking samples in the field because some plants can also be dangerous for you (causing irritation / allergies). Such caution is valid in all situations and in all different areas (streets, fields, trees, rivers, etc.) during field examination and sampling. For example, Hydrocotyle ranunculoides, known commonly as floating pennywort, is an invasive water plant, potentially toxic to mammals. It contains saponins which sometimes causes foaming on the water surface.
Another non-toxic plant may also be of interest in your research – the river water-crowfoot (Ranunculus fluitans) aquatic herbarium, here in bloom (from June to mid-August) in the Dordogne region:
It reaches up to 6m in length.
River water-crowfoot is of ecological interest, it provides us with indications of the health and functioning of a river. The plant aids in purification: it assimilates parts of the nitrates and phosphates and oxygenates the water.
Ranunculus are homes for many insects (e.g. dragonflies), a refuge for juvenile fish, spawning places for some fish – a niche in which we can find other indicators concerning the river and its environment.
When ranunculus covers a river almost completely, it’s an indicator of:
- a state of no flooding for several years, which normally reshapes the river bottom,
- a low water level and high water temperature,
- the presence of nitrates in the water.
These indications provide you with potentially valuable insight about the river’s past and the environmental conditions and human activities in the river watershed – for example, pollution of the water by nitrates.
Here’s a project to show you how to collect elements from rivers – Hack The Panke:
“Microbiologist Daniel Lammel and biochemist and illustrator Eliot Morrison from the artist and scientist collective DIY Hack the Panke will guide participants along the Panke River in Berlin-Wedding, discussing the interaction of water, soil and atmosphere from the molecular level and how this effects and is affected by organisms up to the larger ecological level. They will explain how water, plants and soil take part in cycles of carbon and nitrogen that support life, and how Berlin’s urban environment can both nurture and threaten biodiversity.”
In the case of river pollution in rural areas, try to organise yourself in third places by going to meet the farmers of the area concerned and people who could teach you new methods of soil, water or plant sampling. See the report about activities around a river that runs through the city of Rennes.
Water reserves and ponds
To take samples from reserves and ponds, apply the same methods and procedures as in the river. Remember that if the water reserve or the pond is on private property, you must obtain the prior agreement of the people who own the land.
In addition, you can find maps with data on groundwater quality on the web, for example here for France:
Source: Brgm // Infoterre Visualiseur InfoTerre
Seas and oceans
If you want to take samples for seawater quality analysis, the bottles you use must be kept closed when they are not in use. They should not be washed with tap water but rinsed in situ with seawater before each sampling. This will avoid leaving traces of products or other elements from the tap water infrastructure in your seawater samples. The methodology itself is the same as described for rivers.
For the state of bathing water, the Surfrider Foundation has established a sampling protocol that you can use. The Surfrider Foundation also carries out bathing water analysis and regularly publishes the data obtained, as well as offering online courses to learn methods for monitoring the coastal marine environment.
Plankton
Plankton are microorganisms present in soil, river water or sea water. They are ecological indicators of the sampling environment. They are of interest to many citizens and university science programmes or eco-activist observation initiatives. The collection of plankton also represents many opportunities to collect other elements (micro-plastic, algae, shrimp…) and can result in collaborations that may be useful for your investigations.
The program implemented and documented at Concarneau allows you to acquire all the basics needed to bring together boaters, fishermen, citizens and scientists, and to manufacture plankton nets from curtains and PVC pipes. You will then be able to carry out investigations and participatory and citizen workshops by reusing the documentation, protocols and prototypes, as well as the collected data provided by programs that give access under free license.
You can find comparable initiatives by searching online. This will allow you to compare methods and tools and to build partnerships.
Plastic waste on the coastline
During your bio-investigations you can map or ask for analysis of the waste that you find in rivers and on the coastline. With the same intention as sharing recipes, you can use other people’s tools, methods and data to feed your investigations and even to carry out your own bio-investigations, as well as by contributing to databases larger than the area you are interested in.
Ocean Plastic Tracker is a web application for tracking and visualising geo-referenced waste reports:
You can combine your efforts in tracking and analysing plastic waste with those of your water microorganism sampling, water, soil and plant analysis. You will then be able to produce solid data and records to reveal pollution, inform a campaign to stop a construction project, support a collective project for site preservation, or even for use in your supply chain investigation.
This is not a mandatory step in your investigation process, however, recording the sound during your observation and sampling operations in the chosen environment can help you contextualise your information in the future. It can even be used during the presentation, publication or exhibition of your research.
This requires time, skills, and specific equipment to record sounds – for example, around a watercourse or the park in which you are going to carry out investigations or in the heart of the industrial wasteland you are investigating.
It is up to each investigator or working group to assess whether this investment of resources and time makes sense in terms of the final objective of the investigation.