Detecting hot spots and hot moments in river health by combining real-time water quality monitoring and citizen science

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Rivers play a central role in society and there is great interest in monitoring and understanding river health. But these systems are also dynamic in space and time, making it difficult to detect important events that disproportionately influence their form and function. To better understand times (‘hot moments’) and places (‘hot spots’) of high biogeochemical activity in a large, agriculture-dominated river basin, we will combine the technological prowess of high frequency sensors with the power of an engaged downstream community. First, we will use an automated platform with real-time capabilities, deployed in the Saskatchewan River Delta, to understand how ecosystem metabolism and nutrient and sediment flux varies during snowmelt, baseflow and during dam releases. Next we will mount GPS-enabled sondes on canoes for annual trips carried out by a high school in the delta community that travels the length of the river. On these trips, the sondes will collect spatially-explicit water quality data to identify important places for nutrient inputs and transformations. Finally, we will collaborate with the Great Rivers Ecological Observation Network (GREON