Physical fieldwork enquiry

Title

how does the river depth + load change across the bend of a river

Hypothesis A

The river is deeper on the outside bend

Hypothesis B

The load is larger on the inside bend

What was the method of collecting data in Method 1 - River depth

Systematic sampling

What were the positives of the method of collecting data in Method 1 - River depth

new measurement every 80cm. More accurate

What were the negatives of the method of collecting data in Method 1 - River depth

• Pushing the ruler down may make the river seem deeper.

  • Human error - Misread of measurement

What was the method of collecting data in Method 2 - Bed load

Systematic sampling

What were the positives of the method of collecting data in Method 2 - Bed load

• measurement rounded to nearest 0.5, more clear + accurate results

  • measurements recorded at 80cm intervals

What were the negatives of the method of collecting data in Method 2 - Bed load

• most people picked up biggest rock which may ruin the results

  • Only one rock picked up from each location

Way to process and present fieldwork finding - Method 1: River depth

• Cross section graph to compare width and depth

Result of fieldwork finding - Method 1: River depth

In the graph across the 10 sites in the river, the depth of river gets deeper every 80cm

Positive of fieldwork finding - Method 1: River depth

• It was helpful in identifying any anomalies in the data

Way to process and present fieldwork finding - Method 2: Sediment size

Scatter graphs and line of best fit to show if there is a correlation between sediment size and distance across the cross section of the river

Positive of fieldwork finding - Method 2: Sediment size (2)

• By adding line of best fit become a lot more visual and easiet to interpret

• the anomalies are very clea to see

Conclusions of Hypothesis 1 - The river is deeper on the outside bend

• I found that my hypothesis was correct. The results show that it was deepest on the outside bend of the river.

• The inside bend of the river was as little as 2cm deep at site 1 - ranging to 33cm at site 5. Sites 6-10 were all deeper than the measurements from sites 1-5.

• At the outer bend, the depth reached 44cm at it's deepest point (site 8) which demonstrates clearly that the outer bend is deeper than the inner bend.

Conclusions of Hypothesis 2 - The load is larger on the inside bend

• I found that my hypothesis was correct- the riverbed sediment was mostly largest on the inside bend with relatively large measurements such as 678mm and 562mm, compared to the outside bend where measurements included 87mm and 91mm.

• This demonstrates that on average, the sediment size (measured along the longest axis of three pieces of bedload and an average was taken) was larger on the inner bend than the outer bend as expected.

Result of fieldwork finding - Method 2: Sediment size

The mean sediment gradually decreases as the depth of river increases