Wednesday researchers from the University of Minnesota showed off the new way they're watching Twin Cities' waters.
"It's incredibly cutting edge work," co-director of the U of M's Water Resources Center Deb Swackhamer said.
Don't let the low-tech look of an orange pail with sticks piled on top of it fool you. That doohickey in the pond at Pamela Park in Edina is high tech.
"That doohickey you see behind me, that is a micro lab," civil engineering professor Bill Arnold said. "We're getting 40-thousand data points per day."
It's a micro lab; part of a series of stations pumping out maximum information about this runoff pond in Edina's Pamela Park and beaming it back to researchers at the St. Anthony Falls Lab at the University of Minnesota.
"Underwater there's another doohickey," Arnold continued.
This one is a hydro lab that measures things like temperature, salinity, pH and nitrate and oxygen levels, along with the depth and flow of the water.
Arnold says there's also an automatic sampling of water for analysis of fecal coli forms and pesticides.
"What this is essentially is the vital statistics of the water body," Swackhamer said. She says unlike slow data collection of the past, this new method gives real time data continuously.
Instant info that's especially important during heavy rains.
"Because that's when most of the pollutant load comes in," Arnold said.
"It will give us an understanding of our water resources and the ability to protect our water resources at a much greater scale," Swackhamer continued.
"We're hoping to eventually build models that will give us water quality forecasts saying the conditions are right that boating or swimming isn't recommended," Arnold said.
It's important new info for water researchers being used to help protect these waters for the future.
The university currently has a group of five mobile monitoring stations. Arnold says the goal is to one day have a network of 50 to 100 stations providing real time data of area waterways.
The next stop for the current set will be where Shingle Creek meets the Mississippi River.
Click here to read more about St. Anthony Falls Lab and the remote water monitoring project.
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