Water Team

The CU GeoData Water team is a passionate and highly skilled group of professionals dedicated to addressing water-related challenges through the power of geospatial data. With a profound understanding of water science and cutting-edge geospatial technologies, our team brings together expertise in hydrology, sensing, and GIS to deliver innovative solutions for water quality assessment, water resource management, and more. By leveraging advanced geospatial tools and techniques, we aim to empower decision-makers, researchers, and communities in making well-informed choices regarding water management and conservation. Our unwavering commitment to sustainability and excellence places the Water team at the forefront of utilizing geospatial data to promote effective water resource stewardship, ensuring a more resilient future for all.

Current Projects

Past Projects

Past Accomplishments

  • The water team collaborates with the data team to develop a model capable of detecting Harmful Algal Blooms before they occur. This semester we are focusing on forming strong parameters for the predictor and continuing our instrumental builds in order to house the data ourselves! The other data we use comes from the Community Science Institute and the US Geological Survey, which provides a significant amount of data about Cayuga Lake and surrounding watersheds. This data allows us to train the HAB predictor model to a high accuracy.

  • The Water team is actively building a hydroelectric screw turbine demo for visitors and installing a sap-flow sensor to measure how sap-flow changes by time and location.

  • SmartRock sensor - the water team is currently working on our own build of a SmartRock sensor in order to measure various water quality parameters on the lake.

    Micro hydroelectric power system - in order to measure variation in stream velocity in local watersheds, we are building a small turbine system to deploy in a stream at the Cayuga Nature Center.

    Sap flow measuring network - this semester we will deploy a Dynamax sap flow system - in order to gain insight into long-term changes in water uptake in the hydrological cycle.

  • As part of our inner team development the water team has done Geospatial Information System (GIS) workshops in order to teach new members how to use services such as QGIS, ArcGISPro, and Google Earth Engine. This allows members to learn new skills that are relevant to the industry, and also provides visualizations for the team to demonstrate our data.

  • The Water team developed a sensor modeled after the Smart Rock sensor to measure water parameters and detect harmful algal blooms (HABs) in Cayuga Lake, utilizing trend analysis and software tools for visual identification.

  • Remote Sensing Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) is a project based on using accessible satellite data to create an image of the HABs that are occurring in Cayuga Lake.

  • We currently have a partnership with the Cayuga Nature Center, where we are able to use their space in Taughannock to deploy our instrumentation, and they can use our instrumentation as a means of education for local communities. Already, we have gifted and deployed a weather station on their property, which is registered on the NEWA network! Our first project with the CNC will be the micro hydroelectric power system build and the next step will be the deployment of the sap flow sensor network.

Unleash Earth's wonders through data visualizations

  • Map of Nitrate-Nitrite Nitrogen concentration relative to the Tompkins County Recycling and Solid Waste Center. This visualization was made to help explore which factors could increase Nitrate-Nitrite Nitrogen, which is known to contribute to harmful algal blooms. Created using Community Science Institute (CSI) data. This map was created by Thanakorn Rojanasasitornwong.

  • Map of measured concentrations of total phosphorus, soluble reactive phosphorus, and dissolved phosphorus relative to the location of wineries and breweries around Cayuga Lake. This was done as part of our harmful algal bloom parameter mapping project.Created using Community Science Institute (CSI) data. This map was created by Victor Bisbal.

  • Moran’s Plot of distance to nearest winery vs. logged phosphorus level. The Moran’s number being 0.051 and the nearly flat trendline suggest that there is not a notable effect on phosphorus levels, however this may be due to the measurements being taken on different dates. This was done as part of our harmful algal bloom analysis project using Cayuga Lake Watershed data. Created using Community Science Institute (CSI) data. This plot was created by Helena Donnelly.

Present with Impact

Poster presentations offer a dynamic platform for sharing research and ideas in a visually engaging format. They allow presenters to concisely convey complex concepts, data, and findings to a diverse audience. Enjoy some previous poster presentations by the Water team.

Gallery

  • This histogram shows when measured harmful algae blooms (HAB) events happened which could be useful in predicting them in the future. This was also created with CSI data.

  • This correlation matrix shows the strength of the correlation between variables from the Kirchner study. Seeing how these parameters correlate with each other can help us better understand which factors are the most important to include in our HAB model. This correlation matrix was made by Kevin Shang.

  • This linear regression plot can help us predict how the sap flow we get from our sensor will relate to the change in solar flux. Visualization by Kevin Shang using Kirchner data.

  • This visualization could be used in setting up our HAB model. Visualization created using Kirchner data.