It is useful for anyone involved in water quality monitoring or environmental science to be able to answer this question: what is total suspended solids and how is it measured? The total suspended solids in a body of water will have a huge effect on the quality of water in most cases.

In some cases, people will need to conduct these measurements in order to assess how polluted the water is. In other cases, it’s important to get a sense of the total suspended solids in order to quantify the water quality in general from the standpoint of the health of the ecosystem.

The total suspended solids in a body of water will have a huge effect on the water clarity. People will be able to get a sense of the total suspended solids right away just on a visual basis. Still, it’s important to gather quantitative information as well as qualitative information on a given body of water in nature.

The total suspended solids in a body of water are not the same as the turbidity, however. Turbidity shows how the total suspended solids will vary in their concentration and how they will affect the clarity of the water. The total suspended solids are the particles themselves.