No, you don't often hear your local news broadcaster say "Folks, today's pH value of Dryville Creek is 6.3"! But pH is an important measurement of water. Maybe for a science project you have taken the pH of water samples in your chemistry class ... and here at the U.S. Geological Survey we take a pH measurement whenever water is studied. Not only does the pH of a stream affect organisms living in the water, a changing pH in a stream can be an indicator of increasing pollution or some other environmental factor.
As this diagram shows, pH ranges from 0 to 14, with 7 being neutral. pHs less than 7 are acidic while pHs greater than 7 are alkaline (basic). You can see that acid rain can be very acidic, and it can affect the environment in a negative way.
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/phdiagram.html
Page Contact Information: Howard Perlman
Page Last Modified: Monday, 28-Aug-2006 14:56:22 EDT
