How's the Water?
The Lehigh River is the lifeblood of the Lehigh Valley. But how's the water? Is it safe? Will it be safe tomorrow?
The hydroprobe is a useful automatic collection instrument for LEO to assess the Lehigh River. Then the data is used by the Wildlands Conservancy in their water protection programs, and by students in LEO for more detailed projects, such as senior theses and semester research programs/internships. Understanding the Lehigh River is imperative to Lehigh and Northampton Counties because the Lehigh is the primary river affecting the area's groundwater supply. The Lehigh River passes through many areas including farmland, industrial, and residential. Each area makes a significant impact on the chemistry of the water. Monitoring these areas for any hazards to the river, the ecosystems it contains, and human usage is important. Being based in this region, LEO's hydroprobe is in an ideal location to sustain monitoring efforts for the benefit of the entire community.

In partnership with the Wildlands Conservancy, LEO (Lehigh Earth Observatory) maintains a hydroprobe that collects data, weekly, from the Lehigh River. The hydroprobe, a Hydrolab Corporation Datasonde 3 Multiprobe, is a remote monitor that has the ability to take measurements at desired intervals, which can be transferred directly to a PC. The hydroprobe is one of the Wildlands Conservancy's probes distributed along the Lehigh River to assess water quality on a year round continuous basis. The probe automatically collects water quality data such as pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and conductivity. Users can define a logging run, including start date and time, stop date and time, and logging interval. The students deploy the instrument for easy and reliable operation. The data is then downloaded at the end of each week and entered into a database for future use and analyzation.

Getting hydroprobe ready
Deploying hydroprobe
More information @ www.leo.lehigh.edu