River Liffey and Dublin Bay story map

Present day Dublin can trace its origins as far back as 1000 years ago. The city’s first settlers arrived in the 4 ^th  century, Dublin was previously known as Duiblinn (Blackpool) and was eventually settled by the Vikings, when their raids in Ireland began around the 9th century. In 1170 around the time of the Norman invasion Viking settlers played a major part in Irelands political sphere. During this time Dublin became a huge landmark for English lordship and this status Dublin had brough thousands of settlers from Scotland, England and Wales. The predominantly English town was a small area of no more than three square kilometers which hugged the south bank of the Liffey. The Tudor era brought about a period of immense economic, religious and geographic change in Dublin.

Today, the Greater Dublin Area has a population of just over 1.3 million people, a stark contrast to the city’s population of 3,000 people more than a 1,000 years ago.

The River Liffey spurs from bog rich land around Kippure Mountain, it starts off as a small spring a mere 8km north-east from Kippure estate in Co. Wicklow, this source is at around 580m in elevation in relation to sea level.

The largest urban area that is surrounded by the Liffey catchment in Dublin city, however the catchment flows through many urban areas such as Maynooth, Lucan and Donboyne, the total population of the catchment is approximately 1,255,000.

The River Liffey isn’t the biggest river in Ireland as that title belongs to the river the river Shannon however the river Liffey has the biggest population of and catchment in Ireland as it flows through parts of the country where dense population occurs.

The river Liffey rises on the western slops of Tonduff in the Wicklow mountains, from there the river flows west joining up with many rivers, streams and lakes on its decent, whereas the eastern past of the Liffey is drained by several small coastal streams including the Sluice, Mayne and Santry Rivers on the northside of Dublin and the Elm Park, Priory and Monkstown Streams on the southside. The Liffey catchment comprises 17 sub catchments with 77 river water bodies, six lakes, six transitional and five coastal water bodies, and 16 groundwater bodies.

The data presented in the image above describes the amount of rainfall on average per year ranging from 1850 up until 2010 in relation to Dublin Airport.

Hydrology is the science of water occurrence, movement and transport in nature.

Groundwater is water found underground in the cracks and spaces in soil, sand and rock, Groundwater is stored in geological formations of soil, sand and rocks called aquifers. In Ireland there are two different types of aquifers, these are known as bedrock aquifers, and sand and gravel aquifers.

Landscapes and land use change is essential in an environment with a growing population and is crucial in order to support policy related decisions and effective land use management. We can see the changes in land use from maps of Dublin from both past and present such as the two here, the map from the past shows just how underdeveloped Dublin was at the point compared to the density of Dublin in the map from the present.

Dublin Bay stretches from Dun Laoghaire in the south to Howth Head in the north. The bay is a C-shaped inlet that spans 10km along the north-south base.

North Dublin Bay is a relatively healthy estuary with a BQI of 4.72 and estuary PLI of 2.49, the pollution problems that arise in the Dublin bay mainly come from the branch rivers that feed into the bay such as the river Tolka, Liffey and Poddle,

Future work in Dublin bay in order to reduce the amount of pollution should take more focus on these rivers that enter the bay by locating the source of the pollution in these rivers before reaching the bay.

Contamination is the presence of a constituent, impurity, or some other undesirable element that spoils, corrupts, infects, makes unfit, or makes inferior a material, physical body, natural environment, workplace, etc. Pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death. Pollution causes more than 9 million premature deaths (16% of all deaths worldwide).

Below is a video to help understand air pollution and the harm it can cause to humans,

Citizen science is simply science that is undertaken by the public, for this as a class we done water sampling from different parts of the River Liffey in order to determine the quality of the water and the levels of nitrate and phosphorus in the water at one time. The map shown is where the samples were taken from and the average levels of both substances.

Looking at these figures we can determine if the water quality for the River Liffey is in High, good or poor quality.

For phosphates (expressed as phosphate-phosphorous)

High quality is 0.035 mg/l PO4-P.

Good quality is 0.035 mg/l PO4-P.

Poor quality is >0.035 mg/l PO4-P.

For nitrates (expressed as nitrate-nitrogen):

 High quality is 1.8 mg/l NO3-N

Good quality is <1.8 mg/l NO3-N

Low quality is >1.8 mg/l NO3-N

 https://loop.dcu.ie/mod/resource/view.php?id=1826745&redirect=1 

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