Cooperative Agreement for affiliated Partner with the Great Lakes-Northern Forest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for the research outlined below. Timely characterization of the spatial distribution and severity of water quality degradation in response to episodic events is a challenge for the water quality monitoring community given their episodic nature and dynamic and broad potential distribution that is not necessarily visible. Autonomous underwater vehicles equipped with in-situ sensors have been long used by the oceanographic community for geospatial characterization of hydrodynamic, biological and biogeochemical conditions, but due to their high historical cost, this technology has been underutilized in monitoring at the scale of local water quality threats to inform management and the public. The U.S. Geological Survey Water Resources Mission Area is interested in partnering with the CESU to evaluate the operational readiness of a low-cost autonomous underwater vehicle called the JaiaBot BIO. The JaiaBot BIO has been developed with the ability to conduct rapid assessments of the distribution and severity of episodic water quality degradation associated with high flow event riverine plumes and summer/fall cyanobacteria blooms. Lake Champlain is an ideal test bed for this technology given its high watershed to lake area/volume ratio (highly sensitive to episodic disturbance), the co-existence of long-term and high frequency stationary monitoring infrastructure within the lake and its tributaries, and eutrophic bays with well-characterized and highly dynamic (in both time and space) cyanobacteria blooms that are partially driven by transient and spatially heterogeneous bottom water hypoxia. The project's overall objective is to examine the operational readiness of commercially available autonomous underwater vehicle technology coupled with in-situ water quality sensors for quantifying the distribution and severity of events that compromise water quality in near real time. Four (4) JaiaBot BIO autonomous underwater vehicles will be purchased for use during the project and vested to the recipient at the conclusion of the project. The project duration will be 24 months from the receipt of funds.