A weather and water temperature monitoring station was installed on an island in the Charles River for the Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA). The station provides real-time weather and water temperature data for anybody to use, and it is used by CRWA to feed hourly data into an online model that predicts water quality for recreational boating. The model is based on regression analyses correlating key variables from the station, such as water temperature, precipitation, and solar radiation and river flow from the USGS Waltham flow gauge (01104500) with fecal indicator bacteria levels in the water. This water quality forecast is used by the large community of boathouses on the Charles to make decisions about river use. This project was part of Benjamen Wetherill's Master's thesis on the value of real-time environmental sensor networks. It was funded by MIT Sea Grant and supported by the UMass Boston Center for Coastal Environmental Sensor Networks. Click here for real-time data.
Sample water quality forecasts:
