Importance of Water Quality Monitoring
Monitoring water quality is essential in determining the health and composition of streams, rivers, and lakes in a single moment as well as over weeks, months, and years. Rivers and streams are the primary conveyances of freshwater on Earth. These waters serve a variety of important functions such as irrigation in agriculture, aquatic life habitat, for drinking water, for transportation, to produce electricity through hydroelectric dams, and for leisure activities like swimming and boating fish. The health of these waterways is critical to maintain the balance between nature and human civilization.
Continuous Monitoring
A data acquisition unit is the central component of continuous water quality monitoring system. Our datalogger is compatible with a wide range of sensor types and with the addition of wireless transmission modem, data can be transmitted real-time to various data monitoring servers/ platform such as Neon Server Application via cellular or satellite communication.
Sensors typically integrated into continuous water quality monitoring system include multiparameter sonde such as SEBA Hydrometrie's MPS-D3, MPS-D8 and MPS-K16 which can measure temperature, pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, total suspended solids, nutrients, water level, algae, chlorophyll and more. Water level data may be used to calculate and estimate flow rates if the river or stream cross section is known. The system is powered by solar power to be ready to deployed at remote sites without the need of AC power supply.
In-situ Monitoring
There are some situation where in-situ water quality monitoring is more suitable, a portable readout unit such as the SEBA Checker-2 can be connected to MPS-D3, MPS-8 or MPS-K16 multiparameter sonde for measuring water quality parameters (e.g. oxygen, pH, conductivity, redox potential, turbidity) in surface waters. Data can be read directly from the 3-line backlit LCD display and an integrated logger can be added upon request for manual and / or automatic storage of measured values.