Project Amazonia: Monitoring - Water
Monitoring of river volume is important as a means of calibrating hydrologic cycle models. It is also important in order to predict and give advance warning for floods further downstream.
Monitoring
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Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP): device which uses ultrasonic device to monitor river volume |
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Interferometric synthetic: remote sensing techniques that collects data on river volumes |
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Airborne Scanning Laser Altimetry (LiDAR): detect water level changes. This technique has already proven to be highly useful for measuring vegetation height and so data from such a system would be particularly useful in modeling runoff. |
One major source of threats is the mining processes and their side effects. Acid mine dragains (or AMD) is a solution originating at a mine site and carried off in rain or surface water.
Monitoring
| Thermal imaging cameras on the planes (part of SIVAM’s data collection system): can locate groundwater flows (but not useful in determining chemical composition) |
| Quanta-G water quality instrument: designed specifically for ground water monitoring. It measured temperature specific conductance, salinity, total dissolved solids, dissolved oxygen reduction potential, depth, and vented level. |
| Infrared Remote Sensing: High frequency monitoring, use only information of cloud-top temperature to determine surface rainfall |
| Microwave Remote Sensing: Based on the distribution of within the cloud, explain instantaneous rainfalls more realistically, but can only monitor twice/day for any location, Housed on low-orbiting satellites |
| Fixed-time Recording Local Sensing: Records the amount of rainfall over a set interval of time. In some ways this is a very inefficient method as it produces a large number of extraneous zeros in the data set |
| Fixed-event Recording Local Sensing: Fixed-event recording records the time interval over which a set amount of rain falls. The method eliminates the large amount of extraneous zeros, making date sets leaner and more manageable. |
| Climate Prediction Center merged analysis of precipitation (CMAP): The merged analysis was composed of two kinds of data – standard precipitation (STD) and enhanced precipitation (ENH). STD consisted of gauge observations, where as ENH consists of five kinds of satellite estimates. |
| Direct (Lysimeter): evapotransportation = precipitation-drainage-mass |
| Indirect (Water Balance): Lysimeters (even though accurate) is not effective on a large scale. Therefore, even though it is not as accurate, we use indirect method to determine evapotranspiration. |
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VHF Telemetry: uses VHF transmitters in the frequency range 173-174 MHz with 1mW output. The system is used to monitor the position of tagged animals. The researchers will be able to study the movement of fish in regular bases as well as reproduction cycle, social behaviors, and other activities. |
| Robotic Boat: less costly alternative to VHF telemetry which uses a tracking system that is contained in a 10’ low-cost kayak hull. It includes subsystems that allow for its autonomous operation while following a tagged, swimming animal. GPS is used to monitor the position of the boat and acoustic transducers are used to locate the aquatic life. |
| Parasites: Parasites are potential indicators of environmental quality due to the \variety of ways in which they respond to anthropogenic pollution. They provide valuable information about the chemical state of their environment not only through their presence or absence but also through their ability to concentrate environmental toxins within their tissues. |
Each year the Amazon transports suspended sediment to the delta plain. The combined exchanges of sediment are estimated an average of 2070Mt per year.
Monitoring
| Optical Backscatter: shines light into a sample volume and measures reflected light using photodiodes positioned around the emitter. |
| Acoustic: Emits short bursts of high frequency sound from a transducer. The sediment will reflect a certain amount of the sound depending upon the concentration, particle size and frequency. |
| Spectral Reflectance: Suspended sediment concentrations are measured using the amount of radiation reflected from a body of water and the properties of that water. |
| Digital Optical: A charged-coupled device records the sediment/water mixture in-situ. It can be analyzed for size and concentration of suspended sediment particles, and to confirm the nature of the sediment. |
