Background to the challenge
The Kingdom of Thailand covers a land area of 513,115 square kilometers with a population of over 68 million people. Like many Asian countries, increasing population, urbanization, agricultural and industrial expansion is impacting the water quality of various water sources. As a developing country Thailand is torn between the pressures of economic growth and the demands of the environmental lobby. There is also ignorance amongst the local population of the Tha Ton region who do not always see the full impact of their behaviour on water quality of streams and rivers, or the polluting effects they may have further downstream. People also pollute the quality of local rivers without really considering this to be pollution as they may have been doing this for many generations and see it just as a part of their life. This is true of Thailand where the annual burning of undergrowth in the forests of the north of Thailand adversely affect the quality of water further downstream.
The challenge
This challenge considers the usages of water, and considers how these cause changes in the river system, particularly with regard to water quality. The aim is to use mobile technologies and other equipment to measure the quality of water along different points of a local river in order to produce a multimedia resource that can be used in local schools to educate children about river quality and alternative approaches to forestry and local farming. The resource should illustrate how human activity affect the flow characteristics and water quality of a typical river and how associated problems might be resolved.
The participants addressing this challenge are:
To see how they have addressed this challenge, you should visit their Group Pages:
Challenge 4 - Fieldwork Challenge 4 - Rivers and water quality |