Little Bear River
The Little Bear River Test Bed, which is located near Logan, UT, is an environmental research facility associated with Utah State University. It is one of 10 WATERS Network test bed projects located across the United States and funded by the National Science Foundation. These test beds focus on environmental sensors, deployment of sensor networks, development of new modeling tools, and development of cyberinfrastructure.
This project is examining a special case of a general problem important for environmental observatory design by developing a set of "smart" sensors connected to a central database. The sensors collect real-time, high frequency data of easily monitored variables (e.g. turbidity), and the control system will use that information with a Bayesian Network to initiate intermittent sampling of more difficult to measure constituents (e.g. phosphorus). The real-time values will be related to the wet chemistry data and used as surrogates to quantify fluxes of interest. Specific objectives include the estimation of fluxes from surrogate data, the relation fluxes to watershed attributes and management practices, and the development of two way linkages between the sensors, a central database, and models or data analysis software.
Research infrastructure in the Little Bear River test bed includes several real time streamflow and water quality stations, four real time weather stations, a spread spectrum radio telemetry network, and the database, software, and computer infrastructure required to process and manage the data collected in the Little Bear River watershed.
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