Product category:
Hydrometry, Environment and Floods
News Release from: Partech Instruments | Subject: CSWM mobile laboratory
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 18 July 2008
Mobile laboratory for water research
project
Research studies at Lancaster University Centre will use a mobile laboratory from Partech Instruments to understand how nutrients move between ground and surface waters
The mobile laboratory supplied to the Lancaster University Centre for Sustainable Water Management (CSWM) was designed and constructed by Partech Instruments, and will play an important role in their research studies The Partech mobile laboratory contains two four-channel nutrient analysers and a water quality monitor
This article was originally published on Processingtalk on 15 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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These instruments enable water quality monitoring, i.e turbidity, pH, Redox, DO, and conductivity to be measured every 10 minutes.
If the turbidity level increases the 'total phosphorus' facility is turned on automatically to measure in fast total phosphorus 10 minute cycles.
Normally it measures total phosphorus every hour and also produces a nutrient suite comprising ammonia nitrate, nitrate, orthophosphate, on streams 1, 2 or 3 every hour.
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The laboratory is powered by solar and wind power generators and results are transmitted by telemetry.
Headed by the co-directors, Professors Louise Heathwaite and Phil Haygarth, the CSWM seeks to deliver cross-disciplinary science in water-related research areas.
Research activities at the Centre focus on developing scientific tools and techniques to enable the uncertainties associated with land and water use problems to be addressed in the development of sustainable water management strategies.
"The mobile laboratory supplied by Partech Instruments will play an important role in research into understanding how nutrients move between ground and surface (river) waters," comments Dr Paddy Keenan at the CSWM: "To put the significance of this research into context, groundwater-fed rivers, such as the one the mobile laboratory will be monitoring, are very important because of the special ecosystems that they support, providing habitats for some of the UK's most notable, yet threatened aquatic species, including the white-clawed crayfish, river and brook lamprey, Atlantic salmon, otter, bullhead and water crowfoot (Ranunculus spp).
Many of the rivers in the UK are supplied mainly from groundwater sources, especially during the summer months when rainfall is characteristically low.
There is a need to understand how rivers like this will respond to changes in climate.
The Centre's research will help us to learn more about the processes that operate in something called the hyporheic zone where groundwater and surface water mix.
This zone could be very important for the ecological health of the river and ultimately the fish populations that the river supports.
The river which the laboratory will be monitoring is a really good example of groundwater flow into a river, which is especially important in the summer months when rainfall is lower and there is not much surface water entering the river as runoff from the river catchment.
The unique design of the mobile laboratory will enable us to study what happens in the hyporheic zone by sampling nutrient concentrations in both surface and ground waters at high temporal resolution".
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