Macrosystems EDDIE Module 10: Exploring Tradeoffs in Water Quality Management Using Environmental Data (Instructor Materials)

This EDI data package contains instructional materials necessary to teach Macrosystems EDDIE Module 10: Exploring Tradeoffs in Water Quality Management Using Environmental Data, an educational module for undergraduates. Many water management decisions come with tradeoffs. One important example of such a decision is the use of chlorine in the drinking water treatment process. Chlorination is an important disinfection step in water treatment and is needed to protect water consumers from harmful pathogens (such as bacteria). However, when there are high amounts of organic matter in the raw water, chlorination can result in the formation of potentially cancer-causing disinfection byproducts. Environmental sensor data on water quality conditions, such as measurements of organic matter in drinking water reservoirs, can help inform water management decision-making and reduce the risk of unintended consequences due to use of chlorine in water treatment. To introduce water treatment students to the use of high-frequency data to inform their management decision-making, we created a short (one- to three-hour) module which develops key skills in high-frequency data visualization and interpretation. In this module, students explore organic matter data collected from drinking water reservoirs and learn how to interpret these data to inform decision-making about chlorination during drinking water treatment, using data from the Virginia Reservoirs Long-Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) program. This module was created as part of a virtual, asynchronous curriculum for community college students training to become drinking water treatment plant operators, and could also be taught in high school or introductory undergraduate environmental science and natural resource management courses. The module is designed to be flexible for use in-person, hybrid, and virtual, asynchronous course formats. Students complete module activities using an R Shiny web application which can be accessed from an internet browser on a computer. The R Shiny application is published to shinyapps.io and is available at the following link: https://macrosystemseddie.shinyapps.io/module10/. A GitHub repository is available for the R Shiny application code (https://github.com/MacrosystemsEDDIE/module10), and the code repository has been published with a DOI to Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18837863). This data package includes open source versions of module introductory lecture slides, a student handout, and an instructor manual which can be used to teach the module. Readers are referred to the module landing page for additional information (https://serc.carleton.edu/eddie/teaching_materials/modules/module10.html).