MRI: Acquisition of a Smart Sensor Web for understanding freshwater ecosystems

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An award is made to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to acquire a single, highly integrated network of lake sensors that form a "Smart Sensor Web", which will monitor chemical, physical, and biological parameters of Lake George, NY and its major tributaries over more than a decade. Fresh water is a critical global resource for agriculture, electricity generation, industry, human health, and ecosystem health. As a result, there is a tremendous need to understand the functioning of freshwater ecosystems and how human activities affect these functions. The Jefferson Project is a large, interdisciplinary effort to address this need by incorporating research and technology from multiple fields of science. To monitor changes in the lake over space and time, the Smart Sensor Web includes weather stations, tributary stations, vertical profilers, and acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) equipped with IBM Smart Technology. These sensors can communicate with researchers and each other to make real-time sampling decisions over space and time. These data will be combined with historic data (35 yrs of non-automated weather, tributary, and lake chemistry data), ongoing food-web surveys, and experimental data that examine the underlying causes of how human activities can alter overall water quality. These monitoring and experimental data will then be brought together to develop integrated models of weather, run-off, lake circulation, and food webs. Assembling these components will serve as a global example of how researchers can use advanced technology for environmental monitoring, serve as a basis for real-time and responsible conservation tactics, and to attain a scientifically deep understanding of freshwater ecosystems, which are critical for global security and society. The data and models that are facilitated by the Smart Sensor Web will allow us to address a wide range of transformative questions. These questions include tracking changes in phytoplankton, micro-benthos, and microbial assemblages with respect to spatial and temporal changes in physical and chemical parameters, understanding the effect of species diversity on lake ecosystem processes, and quantifying the effect of spatial and temporal food chain coupling on lake ecosystem processes. We will also be able to monitor and track anthropogenic disturbances (e.g., nutrient inputs, turbidity, and road salt), understand how climate variation is associated with shifts in lake hydrology and temperature profiles, and how water currents affect the dispersal of invasive species. Moreover, the Smart Sensor Web will allow researchers to establish modern proxies for reconstructing the lake?s history via lake coring research. The data produced by the Smart Sensor Web will be combined with many other types of data including non-automated monitoring of other lake parameters, experimental manipulations, and a diverse set of models (i.e. weather, hydrology, lake circulation, and food web models). Together, these efforts will offer the ability to conduct an integrated ecosystem assessment and a lake web observatory that will serve as a global blueprint for a revolutionary approach to understanding freshwater ecosystems. Data provided by the instrument will be used by a diverse group of faculty spanning eight departments and multiple centers at RPI. In addition to the traditional benefits of training students and disseminating results to the public through seminars and web sites, the broader impacts of the Jefferson Project extend much farther. The data, semantic data, and data derivatives will be available to scientists around the world. In addition, the 45 faculty, post-docs, and graduate students involved in the Jefferson Project will collectively conduct a massive amount of K-12 STEM education and communication to the public. Faculty and students are already involved in ongoing outreach, and we are proposing several new activities designed to visualize complex ecosystems, including a 3D online educational game simulation for middle and high school students, a visiting artist program, and a virtual artwork installation, "The World of Plankton". This latter installation is an interactive 3D immersive environment world to be shown in museums, art galleries, and online. These efforts will extend our outreach to diverse communities throughout art, science, education, and cultural venues.