Name: Ronnie Kendall Grade: 4th

Project: Title: Influence of wintering migratory geese on water quality at Lake Ransom Canyon

With water quality being so important to us in West Texas, it is important to consider the thousands of geese that migrate to and winter at Ransom Canyon Lake and which may affect the water quality in one of our local lakes. Therefore, I hypothesize that the migration of geese into the Ransom Canyon Lake in the winter and their resulting organic waste will lower the water quality. To test this hypothesis I assembled sample water bottles and coordinated my work with A&L Laboratory, Lubbock, Texas and at a Texas Tech University Laboratory. I also counted the geese on multiple days. I got the average daily weather from the National Weather Service. Water quality of Lake Ransom Canyon does not appear to be impacted by the geese there during the December '03 and January '04 timeframe, which is generally the highest time of concentration of geese at Ransom Canyon.