The Upper Ohio River Basin is home to a network of “working” rivers, with industrial and manufacturing bases, the nation’s largest inland port, barge and other river traffic, and non-point source pollution from agricultural, urban and suburban land use, which all contribute to overall water quality issues and concerns. Traditional water quality monitoring is expensive and time-consuming, and is insufficient for providing effective early warning of critical changes in water quality. This project will deploy solar powered buoys to take measurements of water quality including temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, specific conductance, turbidity, chlorophyll, and phycocyanin.  The data will be transmitted and posted to a public website in near real-time to inform the water managers and citizens, about acute and chronic pollution issues.

Contacts: Catherine Magliocchetti; Nicholas Holomuzki; Jeff Yang; Alan Lindquist; Gary Norris