Electrical Conductivity (EC) or Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) has been often used to evaluate the water quality in some water education program for children and youth. This study attempted to find out whether EC (or TDS) can be used as a water pollution criteria in water education program. To clarify it, we used the water analysis data of July 2019 and January 2020 from Water Environment Information System. Data from 332 points in Han-river were used to investigate correlation between the parameters, such as BOD, COD, TN, TP vs EC. Correlation(r) for all data of BOD vs. EC was 0.347 for July 2019 and 0.483 for January 2020. No correlation was observed for BOD Ia and BOD Ib for July 2019 (r=-0.041, -0.030, respectively) and BOD Ia for January 2020 (r=0.041). Better correlation for all data of COD vs. EC was obtained (r=0.543 for July 2019 and r=0.610 for January 2020). However, no correlation was observed for COD Ia for January 2020. High vlaue of EC or TDS does not always mean water pollution, especially for clean water environment. Thus, EC (or TDS) alone can not be used as a water pollution criteria.

This study was performed to investigate the geochemical and benthic environment of three shellfish farms in Suncheon Bay during the period of September 2014 ~ April 2015. Three sampling stations were selected; St.1 is the shellfish farm of razor clam near Jangsan area. St.2 is the shellfish farm of small ark shell near Hwapo area and St.3 is the shellfish farm of razor clam near Yongdu area. Razor clam was the dominant species at St.1, small ark shell and granulated ark shell were dominant at St.2 and St.3, respectively. Granulated ark shell inhabited St.3, although it is not cultured at that station. This station’s exposure to air during the ebb tide and sediment composition likely provides the appropriate habitat for granulated ark shell species. Analysis of the number of different species showed that 8 benthos species were found to be distributed at St.1, 18 species at St.2, and 13 species at St.3. Among three stations, the highest Ignition Loss (IL), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Acid Volatile Sulfide (AVS) values were obtained from the sediment at St.2. The analysis of pore water from St.2 also showed the highest values of Total Organic Carbon (TOC), ammonia (NH4 +), Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen (DIN) and phosphate (PO4 3-). These results are related to the fact that species dominance and richness is the highest in St.2.

Seasonal and stational variation of SS and COD were investigated from February 2008 to December 2010 and the relationship between them was discussed. During three years monitoring, SS decreased significantly (46% decline) possibly due to the increase of precipitation and thereby resulting salinity drop. COD on average was the highest in 2009. SS was the highest in autumn and the lowest in winter, and over 72% of SS was FSS. While SS is high in the upper sampling stations of the bay with shallow water, COD values do not show any relationship to the geomorphological characteristics. CODins, which was defined as COD after filtration, ranged 56%(winter) ~ 44.6%(summer) and showed no correlation with SS. It indicates that high SS concentration is not necessarily related to the high CODins. The seasonal CODins/SS data, which can be interpreted as COD density in SS, shows that SS in winter contains the dense COD materials compared to the other seasons.