January 2024
Sensor calibration, maintenance, and quality control are critical to producing good long-term sensor-collected data. Before collecting any data, we first needed to develop a database that could collect all of the continuous measurements from the sensors and enable potentially anomalous data to be identified and discarded.
Project team members Tom Bernardin, Tanmay Agrawal, and Lara Gulmann led the development of a database that accepts Onset oxygen sensor data and replicates the calculations and adjustments that the Onset logger software (Hoboware) makes to oxygen measurements based on the water’s salinity and temperature. This ensures that we can compare our data with other communities of water quality monitors that use these same high-quality and widely-available data logging sensors. The new database makes it easier for us to identify data collected in the field that does not pass data quality standards.
February 2024
Kristin Huizenga joins the COMBB project as a new Postdoctoral Researcher. Kristin has a PhD from the University of Rhode Island. She deployed and managed a network of water quality sensors in Narragansett Bay. She’s also investigated how climate change and nutrient reductions influenced the abundance and reproduction of Narragansett Bay’s lobsters. Kristin will help manage new sensor deployments and analyze the data they produce.
Chris Neill (with microphone) presented a talk on the figure of citizen science at the National Science Foundation Smart and Connected Communities Principal Investigator meeting Feb 28-29 in Nashville, TN. From left: SCC PIs Pradeep Kurup of the University of Massachusetts – Lowell, Teresa Gonzales of Loyola University of Chicago, Barnali Dixon of the University of Southern Florida, and NSF Program Officer Vishal Sharma. / photo by Kristin Huizenga
Chris and Kristin attended the National Science Foundation Smart and Connected Communities Principal Investigator meeting held February 27 and 28 in Nashville. Chris gave an invited lightning talk and co-led a workshop session on how SCC projects involve citizen science in our project. Participants in that session will produce a short document with suggestions for how new NSF programs might study and induce citizen science.