Autonomous Eyes on Water Quality

FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute researchers have developed the Chamber ARray for Observing Sediment Exchanges Long-term (CAROSEL), an autonomous underwater system that continuously measures how nutrients like ammonium move between sediments and overlying water.

For the first time, scientists can observe these exchanges in real time, multiple times a day, over extended periods – offering an unprecedented look at how sediments influence water chemistry.

This insight is vital because nutrient releases from sediments can fuel harmful algal blooms, degrade water quality and disrupt aquatic ecosystems. By revealing how quickly these processes respond to changes in light, oxygen and weather, CAROSEL provides a powerful new tool for managing nutrient pollution and improving the health of lakes, estuaries and coastal waters.

“What’s most exciting is that CAROSEL gave us a detailed, hour-by-hour view of how weather and environmental changes directly affect the chemistry between the lake bottom and the water above,” said Jordon Beckler, Ph.D., research professor at FAU Harbor Branch and fellow in the FAU Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering (I-SENSE). “That level of detail helps us untangle the complex chain reactions happening in lakes and estuaries – something that’s been incredibly hard to do until now. We see this technology as a powerful new tool for understanding how these fluxes drive ecosystem dynamics, especially given the explosion of harmful algal blooms globally over the last few decades.”

Read the press release.