Hudson River Environmental Monitoring Goes High-Tech

The Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, a non-profit scientific research organization based in Beacon, NY, has teamed up with IBM and several other research groups to develop a high-tech environmental-monitoring system for the state's Hudson River that would transform its 315 miles into an interconnected network of sensors. These would collect data on the river's biology and chemistry and transmit them to a central location for further analysis by IBM's new system — which will take the information and create a virtual model of the river to simulate its ecosystem in real time.

Some of the network's sensors will be mounted on a solar-powered robotic underwater vehicle (seen above) built by RPI and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) while others will be fixed in place along the river bed or suspended from buoys. The IBM system will use the gathered data to monitor the river's temperature, pressure, salinity, dissolved oxygen content and pH levels — which will help indicate whether pollutants have entered the Hudson River — and its sea life.

Love those autonomous robots out there collecting data for us.

via TreeHugger