Development and deployment of distributed mini-observatory nodes to couple STEM training with coastal biogeochemistry

University Of Hawaii, Honolulu

Investigators

Abstract

The high cost of commercial solutions for environmental sensor observatories that provide near-real-time streaming data limit the number of units that can be deployed by researchers and is cost-prohibitive for scholastic K-12 programs or interested 'citizen scientists'. The project will develop a robust, novel, inexpensive, and open-source instrument sensor system and data workflow to enable an understanding of the processes affecting water quality and biogeochemistry in coastal environments. With recent increased availability of low-cost, open-source, compact micro-controllers, new possibilities are emerging for environmental sensing of aquatic environments at a fraction of the cost that it once was to build up sensor data logger systems from scratch. Because of the increased emphasis of the scientific community on interdisciplinary research, more and more researchers want to deploy multi-parameter measurement sensor nodes, and because more and more STEM students and citizens are becoming interested in environmental monitoring and climate change, there is a growing need for the development of an affordable coastal marine sensor data platform for water quality and biogeochemistry studies. This research will build upon a new but proven technology that uses open-source hardware components and custom software scripts that can be assembled, tested, deployed, and maintained by high school and undergraduate students, environmental management organizations, or the technologically-savvy citizen scientist, engaging their interest in STEM fields. The technological advances specifically target multiparameter instrumentation to monitor, investigate, and ultimately predict water quality parameters and episodic events associated with water column and sediment-water interface biogeochemical fluxes. A commercially-available thermistor chain will be deployed to measure water column and upper sediment temperature with high enough precision to allow for calculation of porewater transport rates. Transport rate calculations will be coupled to a suite of environmental sensor measurements (e.g., dissolved oxygen, temperature, conductivity, pH, redox potential, water depth, meterological data) to provide a comprehensive understanding of chemical fluxes and the role of sediment porewater exchange in the operation of the coastal ecosystem. Further, each mini-node will be assembled using low-cost, open-source electronics hardware and provide near-real-time data access through the internet.