The effective management of any type of water body requires comprehensive, up-to-date data on its physical, chemical, and biological quality. The Short-Term Water Quality Monitoring System (STMS) can be used in situ to detect an increase of specific pollutants in water. It uses an automatic identification system network that notifies designated recipients in real time. By using the STMS, natural parks can improve their management capacities in relation to biodiversity protection, climate change, and they can also place an economic value on the territory, such as that provided by tourism.
Technological infrastructure
Availability of electricity and internet connectivity, preferably through mobile networks, in the location chosen to place the sensors. The hardware components required are the following:
Training
Training is recommended to explain the use of the software to all potential users.
Investment
Installing a network of STMS buoys to detect pollution intake would be cost-effective, and cheaper than traditional sampling and analysis. Some guidelines for the cost-benefit analysis of implementing the STMS have been developed; they suggest the indicators to use to assess impact categories, such as revenues, compliance with regulations, costs of remediation in case of pollution events, daily management costs, and water monitoring effectiveness.
Concept
The STMS consists of installing a buoy in the water of the protected areas to be monitored, equipped with a multiprobe base unit with battery-powered sensors for relevant water quality parameters, solar panels for charging the battery, a data logger for all measurement values and a GSM modem to send the measurement values to a server. Data are sent both to the Parks’ server and to the EcoSUSTAIN server. Thus, the Parks receive data directly on their computers, displayed in tables and graphs, and if measurements are outside the acceptable ranges, an alarm is sent to selected relevant users. Data are also published on the EcoSUSTAIN open online portal, where authorised users can create periodic reports, which are also publicly available on the portal.
Recommended implementation frequency
The first step is to choose the parameters to monitor, which may include a range of physical (temperature, conductivity, turbidity), chemical (dissolved oxygen, pH), and biotic (blue-green algae and Chlorophyll-a pigments) variables. Factors such as the cost of the probes, their duration and robustness in specific conditions, and the maintenance requirements should be considered. The second step is the choice of locations for installing the buoys, based on several considerations such as the purpose of monitoring, ease of maintenance, and proximity to navigational routes. © ECOSUSTAIN Data are then collected and transmitted at predetermined frequencies, which may be set according to the Water Framework Directive (WFD) minimum requirements. Data are then displayed on the screen in the form of graphs and tables. Statistical values are derived from the raw data (e.g. minimum, maximum and average values from the period). The data are only processed while viewed within the application as live data or through the created reports, but the data itself are valuable and can be further processed outside of the STMS solution by using any desired tool.
Visual observations and automatic recording through photo/ video may be affected by weather/sea conditions. Costs may be high if using dedicated research vessels. Moreover, from large vessels and aircraft it is possible to detect only marine litter that is larger than 20 cm. Finally, the dimension of the objects at sea may be difficult to assess; to overcome this issue, the protocol suggests using a ruler with a string of fixed length, and measuring the apparent length of the object and the degree of distance from the horizon line, in order to have an estimation of the object’s real size. The monitoring of ingestion may depend on the geographic coverage of the species and the availability of animals.
Quantitative results
The application of the protocol allows for the collection of consistent, coherent, and comparable data on floating marine litter on both a large scale (i.e., at the Mediterranean basin level) and local scale (i.e., at an MPA level), and on ingested litter by biota.
Transfer potential
The protocol has been specifically developed for the Mediterranean, but it may be used to collect marine litter data in other marine contexts as well.
Pilot Areas
Krka National Park (Croatia); L’Albufera Natural Park (Spain); Regional Park of Mincio (Italy); Una National Park (Bosnia-Herzegovina).
Different parameters in 1 year
Measurements in the Albufera National Park
Hours/day collection of continuous data series
The data collected for the four pilot sites and associated information can be found in the spatial viewer created by the project: http://ecosustain.info/
Project contact: EcoSUSTAIN
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