Checking the Water has never been easier
Together we can monitor water conditions and algal blooms with our low-cost and easy to use sensor system
Our mission is to develop and refine low cost, open-source water quality sensor systems. Our systems can detect algae and cyanobacteria blooms as well as water clarity and other common water quality variables. The Clarity sensor system makes real-time monitoring more accessible, affordable, and scalable. Clarity helps enable the community to get involved and better know their favorite waterbody.
About the Project
We developed low-cost sensor systems that are able to monitor wetlands, streams, and lakes for temperature, cyanobacteria, algae, and turbidity (aka water clarity). Clarity is part of the “smart design” sensor movement. The Clarity sensor system helps take our ability to check water conditions and send real-time alerts to the next generation.
Clarity’s design is open, public, and part of the creative commons. As open-science, other do-it-yourselfers can make their own sensor system and modifications. Our goal is for Clarity to be a versatile water quality monitoring system that is affordable and customizable.
Please contact us if you are interested in having a sensor built for you (at cost), want tips on making your own, have ideas to expand the system’s capabilities, or just have questions.
What’s New
Meet The Team
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I grew up in rural Ohio where I spent my days tramping through woods, streams, ponds, and farms, discovering all the wonderful things these environments offer. I hunted deer among the strip-mines and quarries behind my house with a feeling that this was nature. Later, as a college student and then a marine fisheries observer, my views of how humans interact with the environment and nature began to shift. I saw firsthand our role in degrading and altering ecosystems. I began to wonder what a pristine ecosystem was and to what extent humans have shaped nature. This recognition and curiosity energized me and lead me to graduate school where I began conducting research on human, land, water interactions.
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Dr. Morales-Williams is an Assistant Professor in Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at The University of Vermont. I am a limnologist specializing in phytoplankton community ecology and carbon biogeochemistry. My research focuses on the role of disturbance in driving lake ecosystem function across space and time. I am interested in how anthropogenic disturbance (watershed land use, climate change) drives algal community assembly and cyanobacteria bloom formation, linking fine scale physiological mechanisms with ecosystem and landscape scale processes. My lab group integrates paleolimnological approaches with ecological theory, experimental manipulations, and high-frequency monitoring to understand and define community assembly rules and feedbacks across scales.
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Prof. Xia has a Ph.D., from University of Rhode Island. His area of expertise is in Mixed Signal Circuit Design and Test, Adaptive Multifunctional Integrated Circuit Design, Reconfigurable Computing.