Thrust Areas Ecosystem Water Institute Classification Level
Water, Land Use and Ecosystems Water and Climate Water and Society Water Resources Sustainability Springs Wetlands Watersheds Aquifers Lakes Coastal Zone  Water Institute Classification 1  Water Institute Classification 2  Water Institute Classification 3  Water Institute Classification 4
     

Design and Demonstration of a distributed sensor array for predicting water flow and nitrate flux in the Santa Fe Basin
Contract No:  63158
Goals and Objectives
 
Watershed characterization requires well-planned sampling to track simultaneous time-variable fluxes and flowpaths of water, nutrients, sediments, and energy. In this research project legacy hydrologic, meteorologic and water quality data from the Santa Fe basin in the Suwannee river watershed will be assembled into a web-accessible digital watershed. These data, together with predictions from physically-based hydrologic models, will be used to develop a probabilistic algorithm to predict surface water stage and flux throughout the Santa Fe river basin and evaluate the accuracy of these predictions. Information on prediction uncertainty will be used to design a spatial network of new conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensors to improve the predictions. The adequacy of the assembled data and the utility of the optimal estimation algorithm will be evaluated by comparing resulting predictions with observations of surface water stage and flux from the newly deployed CTD sondes.

In addition, off-the-shelf optical and cadmium reduction continuous nitrate sensors will be deployed at selected locations in the Santa Fe watershed to develop improved local relationships among flow, stage, conductivity and nitrate. This new knowledge will lay the groundwork for developing a general methodology to augment continuous measurement of nitrate with correlated surrogates (i.e., in this case flow and conductivity) to decrease the density of sensors needed to accurately predict the nitrate in the system over space and time. Furthermore, the data will also lay the groundwork for developing improved understanding of the chemical and physical controls of nitrate and water fluxes through watersheds required to address science questions that cannot be answered with current data sampling and monitoring programs.
 
Planned Outputs
A probabilistic estimation framework focused on predicting surfacea water stage and flow rate along the Santa Fe stream network
A web-accessible geo-database of federal, state, and project data for access by regional stakeholders, local and non-local researchers
An improved understanding of flow, stage, conductivity and nitrate dynamics in the Santa Fe River
Refereed journal articles
 
Available Outputs
Title: A Method for Measuring the Incremental Information Contributed from Non-Stationary Spatio-Temporal Data to Be Fused, doi: 10.1109/IGARSS.2008.4778977, vol. 2, pp. II-261 – II-264, Proc. IEEE 2008 IGARRS.
Authors: Krekeler et al.
Title: Design and Demonstration of a distributed sensor array for predicting water flow and nitrate flux in the Santa Fe Basin
Authors: Graham et al
Title: Probabilistic Fusion of spatio-temporal data to estimate stream flow via Bayesian belief networks,pp.4870 – 4873, doi: 10.1109/IGARSS.2007.4423952. Proc. IEEE 2007 IGARRS.
Authors: Nagarajan et al.
Title: Santa Fe Test Bed Web Page– sensors, maps and data
Title: Suwannee Hydrologic Observatory Web Page
Title: WATERS Test Beds Web Page
Project Lead
Graham, Wendy
 
Project Participants
Cohen, Matthew
Delfino, Joseph
Graham, Wendy
Martin, Jonathan
Slatton, Kenneth Clint
 
Additional Participants
Kathleen McKee
 
EcoSystem:
Aquifers
Springs
Watersheds
 
WIClassLevel: 
Level 3: WI Directed Project
 
ThrustArea: 
Water, Land Use and Ecosystems
 
Sponsor
NATL SCIENCE FOU
 
Grant Award Dates
12/1/2006 to 11/30/2008