INCOIS unveils coastal water quality monitoring system
Scientists at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) have made functional a firstofitskind Water Quality Nowcasting System (WQNS) for environmental monitoring and forecasting the east and west sea coastlines.
The stateoftheart monitoring system intends to check both the natural influence and the impact of industrial effluents, urbanisation, river discharge and agricultural runoff on the water quality of the Indian coastline covering a range of environmental conditions and touristintensive zones.
It is done with the help of moored buoys equipped with different physicalbiogeochemical sensors, data telemetry systems integrated with satellitebased observations for realtime data transmission to land. The team of scientists from Goa based National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) and INCOIS, spearheaded by group director T.M. Balakrishnan Nair, took up the project, which involved positioning of buoys at critical locations at Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) on the east coast and Kochi (Kerala) on the west coast.
The continuous real time data generated from these moored buoys observations act as sentinels of the sea as the cuttingedge sensors measure a plethora of 22 water quality parameters like measuring speed and direction of the surface currents, salinity,
temperature, pH levels, dissolved oxygen, phycocyanin, phycoerythrin, coloured dissolved organic matter, chlorophylla, turbidity, dissolved methane, hydrocarbon (crude and refined), scattering, pCO2 (water and air), and inorganic macronutrients like nitrite, nitrate, ammonium, phosphate and silicate, said Dr. Nair.
Realtime data is transmitted to a central processing facility at INCOIS here and after necessary quality control, it is disseminated through the institute website.
The WQNS had demonstrated its ability to detect changes in the water column properties due to climatic events, changes in the ocean over a period of time over short distances and extent of dissolved methane from ocean currents, he said.
The senior scientist said WQNS holds immense scope for sustainable coastal resource management.