Elodea Lab

Dara Ghasemizadeh
Period 1 AP Biology
9/19/02

Dissolved Oxygen and Aquatic Primary Productivity Lab


Introduction: Oxygen is essential to the lives of many organisms. In the atmosphere there is quite an abundance of oxygen. While in the aquatic environment there is not as much. In the aquatic environment there only exists oxygen in it’s free state, or dissolved oxygen (DO). Both chemical and physical factors can affect the amount of DO in water. Factors such as salinity, pH currents, and especially temperature can affect the DO. Biological processes photosynthesis and respiration can also affect the amount of DO in the water. The measurement of DO usually determines whether the biological activities requiring oxygen are occurring.

In this lab we will be using the aquatic plant Elodea in samples containing different amounts of...