Clarity
We believe that the Clarity sensor system is necessary and the natural next step in the “smart” city, agriculture, and water movements. Clarity can allow easy access to water health information and allow real-time response to the conditions in the water. Clarity will help collect information about the growth of cyanobacteria and algal blooms, and why they are reaching dangerous levels. For recreational waters, Clarity could generate real-time alerts to warn the public and managers that potentially dangers levels of cyanobacteria are present. In addition, Clarity, with it’s turbidity sensing, could help us better understand how soils and fertilizers are transported through streams into lakes and improve how we manage ecosystems.
The Clarity sensor system can enhance the capabilities of current monitoring programs and help take our ability to observe and predict wetland, stream, and lake health to the next generation. Clarity can expand temporal range and frequency of water clarity observations. Clarity can provide measurements under conditions when visual identification of cyanobacteria is unreliable or environmental conditions are unsafe to collect a water sample by hand. Clarity also helps solve the “if only I could afford more sensors” problem in aquatic research, which often limits where, when, and how waterbodies are studied and monitored.
Commercial sensor systems and data buoys are often expensive to purchase maintain and require specialized expertise, which often place them outside the scope of community and academic research science programs, or greatly limits the number of sensors that can be deployed. Our Clarity costs a fraction of the price of commercial sensors and produces similar quality data as many commercial sensor.
We are continuously adjusting our sensor system to provide the most reliable and accurate data possible . We are currently on version 4.0, we are exciting to begin field testing during 2024! Clarity will be used in a variety of projects and habitats to better explore its performance and ability to sense algae, cyanobacteria, and turbidity under a range of water health and environmental conditions. Our Clarity system is designed to communicate with Burlington’s smart city LoRaWAN network, but with its internal data storage, Clarity can be used anywhere you can access the surface of the water. Clarity can be easily modified to communicate via wifi, bluetooth, or cellular phone based LoRaWan.
We think the Clarity system will improve our ability to detect changes in water condition and more quickly alert recreators or managers of potentially unsafe water conditions that can occur during cyanobacteria and algae blooms or under murky conditions. These sensor could also prove to be a useful tool in understanding how climate change impacts material transport from the land to water.
OUR FUNDING: We received grants that supported the development of a low-cost, do-it-yourself open source sensor from the Lintilhac Foundation, VT Water Center and USGS, and Saint Michael’s College.
Our Vision
Our hopes for the project are that local water monitoring programs, community science groups, and researchers alike will utilize our low-cost, customizable sensor systems. We believe Clarity and similar systems can reduce barriers to research, improve our understanding of water, and help you better enjoy your favorite waterbody.
What’s the Problem
Algae and Cyanobacteria Blooms
Algal and cyanobacteria blooms are become more common in lakes, ponds, and large rivers. These blooms, also known as blue-green algae, can produce toxins that can make you and your pets sick. Blooms can appear in a variety of forms. Some shimmer like metal, others look like a blue-green paint or oil slick, and yet others appear like a floating green sponge or foam. If you see a bloom or the water is unusually murky, its best to stay away.
When blooms float to the surface of the water they can be quickly spotted, but when blooms are mixed up within the water or at moderate levels, we have trouble seeing them from the water’s edge. This is where the Clarity sensor system comes in. Clarity provides a low-cost and easy way to look for blooms without needing to enter the water or approach the water’s edge.
FroM the Land to Water
Global change is disrupting water-vegetation-land interactions and altering material fluxes through stream networks. However, large knowledge gaps remain around the sensitivity and uniformity of watershed responses to the complex effects of changing landscapes, climate, and societal water demands. Second generation, low-cost sensor networks can help fill these knowledge gaps by observing material fluxes in real-time throughout a watershed and directing the timing and location of sampling efforts around dynamic periods of material flux.
In flowing waters, the Clarity sensor system can help us estimate soil movement rates through water at a much higher frequency than our current routine. ’s happening on the land. Clarity has the potential to capture rain over snow events that are becoming more common as the planet warms. As a low-cost system, clarity can be deployed at high risk times, when stream flows and ice conditions make it unsafe to sample or likely equipment will be lost. In addition, Clarity estimates uncertainty around each observation, which could be helpful us better understanding sudden and brief changes in the water. Understanding the movement of soils and other materials through steams and rivers ultimately helps use better predict downstream lake health and cyanobacteria blooms and provides hints to what’s happening across the landscape
Our Approach
The Clarity sensor system estimates four water quality variables: (1) temperature, (2) algal biomass as chlorophyll a fluorescence (μg/L), (3) cyanobacteria abundance as phycocyanin fluorescence (mg/L), and (4) turbidity as near infrared side-scatter/fluorescence (FTU). Clarity is a lunch-box, 3D printed fluorometer with a peristaltic pump driven flow-through cuvette that is housed in a water proof case equipped with a low power, wide area network (LoRaWAN) antenna. Clarity has an internal datalogger using an SD card. The system can be programmed to collect data at different time intervals. Clarity can sample at one fixed depth and the sensor system should be deployed floating on the surface of the water or suspended above the water. The current system cannot be deployed submerged in the water.
Clarity is designed with customization in mind. Clarity’s communication system can be replaced with Bluetooth, WiFi, or cell data without impacting the sensing system. Clarity also has capacity to add sensors and develop new sensing capability. The timing of sampling and measurement statistics calculated for each measurement are customizable. The sensor output is easily standardized to your favorite reference material or specific ecosystem dynamics.