Monitoring Water Quality in a Catchment Basin

Water Catchment: An aerial view of a water catchment where the water quality is strictly monitored.

Customer Requirements

To continuously monitor and manage the quality of the water in a catchment area to test for a variety of chemical and biological agents as well as clarity, rate of movement and height.  The logging solution must be able to collect large amounts of data from a range of sensors.  The customer requires a simple data retrieval process in order to minimize training for staff. 

dataTaker Solution

Equipment

dataTaker DT82E Enviro-logger

USB memory stick

Sensors

Turbidity

Conductivity

Temperature

pH

Level

Flow

Implementation Notes

The dataTaker DT82E records dam parameters such as stream height, pH, turbidity conductivity and water temperature.  Whenever stream height rises rapidly following a rainfall event in the catchment area, the data logger activates water-sampling equipment to collect stream samples for sediments, nutrient and chemical analysis.

Field staff visit the remote sites every three weeks to collect the water samples and data. The data is collected by simply removing a USB memory stick from the top of the data logger and replacing it with another.

The USB memory stick stores all data collected during the period, which can be read directly into a computer back at headquarters using the software supplied with the data logger.

For an application such as this, it may also be useful to know other environmental/weather parameters such as wind speed, wind direction, RH, air temperature, solar radiation and rainfall using a combined SDI-12 weather transmitter.