WATER QUALITY

Water Quality is the chemical, physical and biological characteristics of water and is a really important measurement to know about a river because it indicates how healthy its ecosystem is and how safe its water is to drink. One way to do this is to measure the ‘hardness’ of water as an indicator of how many calcium or magnesium ions are dissolved in it. Hard water will contain more of these ions than soft water and is formed when slightly acidic rainwater falls onto surface or ground rock and compounds from these rocks dissolve into the water. Hard water therefore contains these compounds, which are usually calcium or magnesium hydrogen carbonates.