Know Your Well

1. Know Your Well
A project to inform Nebraska
high school students and well-owners
Christopher Olson, Daniel Snow, Chittaranjan Ray, Ashok Samal, and Matt Kreifels

2. Objectives
• Have high school teachers and students be engaged in a very
important topic to Nebraska: groundwater quality,
• Train teachers and students to effectively use software, a
mobile App and website in crowd sourced water quality data
collection, and analysis
• Compile related data necessary for modeling presence of
contaminants in space,
• Implement, train and validate a neural network model to
predict contamination potential.

3. Participating High Schools
2017
Auburn High School
Newman Grove High School
Waverly High School
Central City High School
2018
Cody-Kilgore High School
Freeman High School
Madison High School
Stuart High School
Bassett High School
McCool Junction High School

4. What do the students do?

5. KnowYourWell App

6. KnowYourWell App

7. Lab Tests
• Basic water quality parameters
• Conductivity, pH, temperature
• Major Anions & Cations
• Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate,
Magnesium, Calcium, etc.
• 18 major pesticides
• Atrazine, DEA, Metolachlor, etc.
• Bacteria
• Total Coliform, E. coli
• Metals
• Iron, Manganese, Copper,
Uranium, Arsenic, etc.

8. Significance/Impact of the Findings
• General Public: The general public, especially the rural residents
will be the key beneficiaries of the work.
• Well Owners: Well owners get a report on their drinking water
quality.
• High School Students: students will be exposed to hands on,
memorable science activities that directly relate to their well
being.
• High School Teachers: teachers have the means, tools and
opportunity to make science education effective for their
students
• Future well owners/users of groundwater: education is the long-
term effective method to change society for the better. The
more the youth is exposed to water science, the better our
future is regarding water quality.