There are several creeks and natural waterbodies in the Atlanta area that many people in the Atlanta University Center are unaware of. These waterbodies include but are not limited to Proctor Creek and Peachtree Creek. However, due to pollution, the water at many of the sites does not meet the quality standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The objective of this research project is to analyze how rainfall affects the amount of E. Coli bacteria as well as the turbidity, and conductivity of water at these sites. To determine how individual areas of certain creeks are impacted, spatial visualization will be used to reveal which parts of the creeks have the highest and lowest quality. By using software such as ArcGIS for visualization as well with statistical tools such as Excel and R, the impaired areas of the creeks will be determined. We expect that this research will help us understand the effects of urbanization and precipitation extremes on urban watersheds.
