This project will examine a special case of a general problem important for observatory design by developing a set of "smart" sensors connected to a central database. The sensors will collect real-time, high frequency data of easily monitored characteristics (e.g. turbidity), and the control system will use that information with a Bayesian Network to initiate intermittent sampling of more difficult to measure constituents (e.g. phosphorus). The real-time values will be related to the wet chemistry data and used as surrogates to quantify fluxes of interest. Specific objectives include the estimation of fluxes from surrogate data, the relation fluxes to watershed attributes and management practices, and the development of two way linkages between the sensors, a central database, and models or data analysis software. The study site is the Little Bear River watershed in northern Utah, part of the Bear River system and the Great Salt Lake Basin. Cyberinfrastructure for this project uses the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System. Links:
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Contact Information |
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| Site Contacts | Address |
Principal Investigator:David K StevensEmail: david.stevens@usu.edu Phone: (435) 797-3229
Co-Principal Investigators:Jeffery S HorsburghEmail: jeff.horsburgh@usu.edu Phone: (435) 797-2946 Nancy Mesner Email: nancym@ext.usu.edu Phone: (435) 797-1226 David G Tarboton Email: dtarb@cc.usu.edu Phone: (435) 797-3172 www.engineering.usu.edu/dtarb/ |
Utah State University Utah Water Research Laboratory 8200 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322-8200 |
Site History |
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| The Little Bear watershed encompasses 74,000 ha of primarily agricultural land, and the area is experiencing rapid population growth. A reservoir traps high mountain runoff in the East Fork, and another reservoir is located below the confluence of the two main branches. The river eventually flows into Cutler Reservoir, a shallow eutrophic reservoir on the mainstem of the Bear River which ultimately drains to the Great Salt Lake. In 1989, the Little Bear was listed as a high priority watershed by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality with nonpoint source pollutants, sediment and phosphorus, identified as the primary concern. The Little Bear is the focus of current research examining the implementation and effectiveness of publicly-funded best management practices, and real-time monitoring is currently being conducted in the river mainstem. The Little Bear is part of the larger Bear River system, an EPA-Targeted Watershed and the subject of a basin-wide watershed information system. On a larger scale, the Bear is an important part of the Great Salt Lake Basin Hydrologic and Environmental Observatory. Methods and results of the Little Bear test bed project will provide guidance and support for concurrent and future research in the Little Bear, but also for the entire Bear River system and the Great Salt Lake Basin. | |
Research Topics |
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| The questions addressed by this project will be scalable to the design of hydrologic and environmental observatories and include: a better understanding of the transport of waterborne nutrients to water bodies related to watershed attributes and management practices, the feasibility and uncertainty of various surrogate measurements to estimate sediment and nutrient fluxes, the integration of surrogate and direct measurements in observatory design, and the development of a monitoring network with telemetry to a central observations database with the ability to connect models to the monitoring system and the ability to transmit instructions to autosamplers for episodic sampling. | |
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