Otter, water tester
The Problem
Harmful algal blooms are a major environmental problem in all 50 states. Red tides, blue-green algae, and cyanobacteria are examples of harmful algal blooms that can have severe impacts on human health, aquatic ecosystems, and the economy. Nutrient pollution from human activities makes the problem worse, leading to more severe blooms that occur more often. While the development of a limnological database and knowledge is important, no amount of generalization can provide a full understanding or predict conditions of any particular lake. Each lake system is unique, and its dynamics can be understood only to a limited degree based on information from other lakes. Just as a physician would not diagnose an individual’s medical condition or prescribe treatment without a personal medical examination, a limnologist or hydrologist cannot accurately assess a lake system or suggest a management strategy without data and analysis from that particular lake and its environment. Lakes are a significant and valuable resource and are experiencing increased pressure from development and use. Many lakes do not have adequate information available for management of the lake, and their water quality needs to be assessed and documented
Our Proposal
The proposed solution (OTTER) provides limnologists with daily water column data while not interfering with recreation OR normal wildlife behavior. Currently, there are automated buoy's on the market, however, our solution differs in the following ways. The OTTER "sleeps" on the lake bottom and rises at midnight to sample the water column. Once on the surface, the OTTER transmits the entire water column data packet to a server, requests and receives buffered commands, and then winches itself back to the lake bottom. This behavior protects the OTTER from boats, vandals, birds and other surface wildlife. The OTTER employees a simple and inexpensive method of keeping the sensors clean which helps maintain high accuracy over a long period of time. Environmentally safe batteries are used which allow for 30 day deployments. The battery module can be changed in field. The OTTER is anchored to the bottom and adjusts it’s height to sample the desired water stratum. It can measure a vertical profile hourly to determine the stratum upper and lower limits while remaining far enough below the surface to minimise chance of surface traffic interference. The OTTER is one of many OTTERs deployed at the same time to allow a comprehensive measurement of the water body changes throughout the day, vertically and spatially. This integrated data will allow a model to be improved rapidly to a much more accurate predictive tool. The OTTER programming ca
We Assume that...
We assume that …… Installing collection equipment is manpower and cost intensive. Our ability to simply drop the device at predetermined spots for up to 30 days greatly reduces manpower and cost.
Our ability to transmit bulk data daily allows the data to be available and provides current information to researchers for analysis without additional field work.
The ability to communicate daily with the sample rig and its capability to sample at any depth allows the researcher to identify stratum layers and focus the data collection of daily needs.
There is funding available for mass deployment of the OTTER. G2X can find the right combination of sensors that will be suitable to a wide market so that economics of scale can be achieved.
Constraints to Overcome
We will address the barriers of: real time reporting, long duration reporting, in stratum reporting, reduced manpower requirements, Localized vs distributed data collection to create a more representative map of environmental conditions
Current Work
Get the prototype built.