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Fort Pierce scientific team brings water quality monitoring to the public Environmental data are like air: they are everywhere around us but usually invisible. More environmental data are collected every day than has ever been collected before, but only in the case of weather related observations is it routinely put into a readily accessible form available to and readily tailored to the public's daily activities. If Dr. Edie Widder, president and senior scientist at the Ocean Research and Conservation Association in Fort Pierce, and her colleagues can implement the program they envision, the public will have access to continuously collected coastal water quality data. The researchers' goal is to build and deploy a constellation of inexpensive and reliable sensors that will relay data to an automated display system on line. The front end seen by the public will be, perhaps, a local map with color coded transparent overlays illustrating water quality conditions over a geographic area such as the Indian River Lagoon in a single county. The program stresses simplicity, affordability and ubiquity within a monitored ecosystem. The first order of business has been designing and fabricating a monitoring module that is inexpensive, simple to operate, rugged and capable of continuously monitoring key physical environmental conditions. They have named this module 'Kilroy' after the mythical U.S. soldier who left his moniker all over Europe during WW II. The U.S. Office of Naval Research is funding part of the program through a $448,000 grant. Potentially, these sensors will be employed nationwide. Design and implementation of the monitor builds on Widder's successful career of designing and deploying remotely controlled or autonomous deep sea monitoring devices to make continuous observations in a realm that humans rarely even visit. Those devices have provided pictures of deep sea creatures and their behavior never observed before. The present program includes a component of designing sensors for the Kilroy. When the prototype is tested and acceptable, additional ones will be made by contract printed circuit board fabricators. Data uplink will be through cell phone technology, a cheap and nearly universally available communications system available in many countries. Automated data display may in part use Google maps and other publicly available internet mapping utilities, with data display overlaid. In front of all this technical sophistication, simplicity is the rule and nothing illustrates it better than the Kilroy housing-a PVC cap piece available from a plumbing supply store with a tinted plexiglass dome that is an inexpensive pool filter canister. The enclosure, in addition to being inexpensive, is so mundane, it will not immediately be attractive to vandals. Kilroy is now in advanced prototype stage and deployment testing. The data presentation programs are, "a matter of months away from having the kind of map we want to produce," according to Widder. The monitors measure only the physical characteristics of water. These include turbidity, color spectrum, pressure, flow, light and bioluminescence. A complete characterization of water quality typically includes water chemistry measurements. According to Widder, theses will still have to be obtained by sampling some other way. But even a few chemical measurements will be much more useful when interpreted relative to a broad knowledge of the physical dispersal mechanisms within the water body of interest. The first use of a Kilroy array is planned through a volunteer effort organized through Widder's association with placements in the southern reaches of the Indian River Lagoon. The South Florida Water Management District has expressed interest in the system and is currently comparing data obtained from Kilroy with data obtained from sensors presently in use. Widder has a well decorated scientific career that includes years of ONR support, notable discoveries and significant inventions. She is the recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Award. Her current venture with the OCRA includes an attempt to go beyond data gathering to ensuring that the public has access to and understands it. Ultimately, she and her colleagues want the program to do more than create a data collection. They would like it to make a significant contribution to improving the environment. |