Integrated Major Research Instrumentation for Real Time Analyses Within An Experimental Watershed

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This award partially supports the development of a fully instrumented watershed at Huntington Forest, NY. The forest has been a focal point for ecological field investigations in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State for more than two decades. The project involves the acquisition of a coordinated suite of instruments and development of a network optimized for realtime data acquisition at the Arbutus experimental watershed. Realtime measurements will be combined with wireless technology to enhance this outdoor facility for both research and teaching. Teaching will include not only graduate and undergraduate students, but also the training of high school teachers and their students. The development of field curricula is a focal area of environmental investigations at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and collaborating institutions. The Arbutus Watershed is the only fully operational site in the Adirondacks that is evaluating concomitantly temporal changes in climate, hydrology, biogeochemistry, terrestrial biota and aquatic biota. A major focus of research at this site by scientists and students has been the development of field instrumentation for ecological research. This new suite of instrumentation will focus on continuous measurements of meteorological, hydrological and biochemical parameters at key locations within the catchment and also provide a communication network for wide range of projects including watershed hydrology, elemental mass balances, mercury dynamics and animal telemetry. These measurements will also be used in regional ecological analyses. New field instrumentation will include a wireless communications system that will transmit and/or receive data from individual sites within the Arbutus Lake watershed, plus expand environmental monitoring and data collection, allowing for more extensive ecological and environmental investigations. This expanded data monitoring system will allow for more intensive investigations of physical, chemical and biological parameters in response to environmental change.