Nitrate
Nitrate is a form of nitrogen found in soil and water that helps plants grow but can pollute streams.
Salt in a shaker feeds your food. Too much salt ruins the dish and makes you thirsty. Nitrate works the same way in soil. Plants need some to grow, but extra washes away and harms the fish downstream.
Explaining nitrate by grade level
Plants need food from the soil to grow big and strong. One type of plant food is called nitrate. Rain can wash extra nitrate off farms into streams. Too much of it in a stream can make the water dirty and harm fish.
Projects that explore nitrate
Nitrate is a nitrogen compound that dissolves in water and feeds plant growth. When farms and homes sit near a creek, fertilizer and waste wash into the flow and raise nitrate levels. Wenas Creek passes through more developed land; Umptanum Creek flows through open rangeland. Both start from the same snowpack and feed into the Yakima River — yet when you test each for nitrates, turbidity, and suspended sediment, the readings diverge. Wenas shows higher nitrate and turbidity levels, while Umptanum carries more suspended sediment. That pattern points to human land use as the source of extra nitrogen in nearby waterways.
Nitrate enters rivers from lawn fertilizer, sewage, and animal waste. These sources increase where people live and work. In this project, you test water upstream and downstream from a town for nitrate content, which reveals whether the populated area adds measurable nitrogen pollution to the river.