University of New Hampshire

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire and National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) in Great Bay, New Hampshire, have identified a need for an enhanced, real-time water quality monitoring system in order to be able to observe, predict and react to ecosystem changes.  As a result, a collaborative partnership has been formed to design, develop, and deploy a robust, reliable, real-time estuarine and near coastal water quality monitoring mooring.  This unique partnership brings together science researchers at the Coastal Observing Center and the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Environmental Technology at the University of New Hampshire, resource managers at the Great Bay NERR, and commercial system providers at WETSAT to ensure the development and operation of a complete end-to-end water quality monitoring system.

The goal for this project is to develop a flexible end-to-end system for monitoring the estuarine and coastal environments which spans from observations through data management and modeling in order to provide products tailored to specific end users. 

The commercial partners of WETSAT will be providing a complete mooring/buoy system, a robust data acquisition and control system with real-time telemetry, a multi-parameter instrumentation system, a shore side data delivery system, as well as technical and operational support.  All components of the system use commercial off the shelf components if possible, thereby reducing the need for in house development.  The system design is based upon the combined experience of WET Labs and Satlantic in developing and providing complete monitoring systems.