How can coastal and estuarine scientists collaborate to reduce data gaps?
What affordable technologies can be leveraged by users to accomplish research goals?
What affordable technologies can be leveraged by users to accomplish research goals?
Ecosystem models require a lot of data as inputs to generate the most reliable model results or outputs. While federal and state agencies may have quality data on marine resources, environmental variables seem to be more scarce, especially in shallow estuaries or nearshore environments. Monitoring stations from USGS, buoys deployed by universities or consortia, and point sampling events often occur in deeper waters. Purchasing technology to establish nearshore monitoring is expensive and may require training to maintain the technology, so alternative solutions that are more cost-effective and user-friendly are valuable to estuarine scientists and their models.
I am currently supporting efforts to reduce data gaps in the Mississippi Sound by mounting water quality sensors to the BlueRobotics BlueBoat to conduct transect sampling every other month in rivers and bays to track salinity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, and nitrate levels. The BlueBoat is an uncrewed surface vessel that runs through manual controls or through an automatically guided control system, which allows our research team to deploy the vessel and conduct additional field work while the BlueBoat completes its tasks. The data from these transects along with vertical profile data and water grab samples (for nutrients and TSS) will be used to inform a hydrodynamic, sediment transport, and biogeochemical model that will inform our ecosystem models.
