The recent past, the not so recent past, how much rain, big storm or really big storm or minor storm, early or late season storm, like the year before or not, like two years before or not, new or old groundwater, plants well established or not…
He says this may be his last report on our algae; I hope not. Who else will take the time to analyze and explain for us these amazingly intricate relationships? Al Leydecker, PhD, Stream Team’s technical advisor, has produced many reports over the years on Ventura River’s water quality. Algae and dissolved oxygen have been the focus of late. His latest report, entitled “The Sonde Experiment: A Look at the Accuracy of Santa Barbara Channelkeeper’s Dissolved Oxygen Measurements,” compares the accuracy of the Stream Team’s dissolved oxygen (DO) data with sonde measurements of DO; but in the report we learn, from yet another perspective, how multi-dimensional the relationships are when it comes to when and where and how much algae we get in the river.
To sum this up, Al quotes H.L. Mencken, who said, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”
Here is Al’s report. And here is the condensed version, focusing mostly on the data DO accuracy.