Successful management of river salt loads in complex and highly regulated river basins such as the San Joaquin of California presents significant challenges to Information Technology.Models are used as means of simulating major hydrologic processes in the basin which affect water quality and can be useful as tools for organizing basin information in a structured and readily accessible manner. Models can also be used to extrapolate the results of system monitoring since it is impossible to collect data for every point and non-point source of a pollutant in the Basin. Fundamental to every model is the concept of mass balance. This paper describes the use of state-of-the-art sensor technologies deployed in concert to obtain the first water and salinity budgets for a 60,000 hectare tract of seasonally managed wetlands in the San Joaquin Basin of California. These sensor technologies are being combined with more traditional sensor techniques to support real-time water quality management (RTWQM) in the River Basin. This paper focuses on two innovative technologies -one, YSI Econet, which deals with continuous flow and salinity monitoring of surface water deliveries and seasonal wetland drainage and the second a remote sensing technology for mapping soil 2 salinity in the surface soils of these wetland areas. The paper describes the use of more traditional sensor technologies including a weather station, used to estimate wetland pond evaporation and moist soil plant evapotranspiration and in-situ groundwater water table loggers, used to estimate wetland pond seepage. The paper also discusses the problems associated with continuous data quality assurance and introduces a new software product which streamlines the process of data error correction and dissemination as part of a real-time salinity (RTSM) management program in the San Joaquin Basin.
California's Central Valley, USA is a critical component of the Pacific Flyway despite loss of more than 90% of its wetlands. Moist soil seed (MSS) wetland plants are now produced by mimicking seasonal flooding in managed wetlands to provide an essential food resource for waterfowl. Managers need MSS plant area and productivity estimates to support waterfowl conservation, yet this remains unknown at the landscape scale. Also the effects of recent drought on MSS plants have not been quantified. We generated Landsat-derived estimates of extents and productivity (seed yield or its proxy, the green chlorophyll index) of major MSS plants including watergrass (Echinochloa crusgalli) and smartweed (Polygonum spp.) (WGSW), and swamp timothy (Crypsis schoenoides) (ST) in all Central Valley managed wetlands from 2007 to 2017. We tested the effects of water year, land ownership and region on plant area and productivity with a multifactor nested analysis of variance. For the San Joaquin Valley, we explored the association between water year and water supply, and we developed metrics to support management decisions. MSS plant area maps were based on a support vector machine classification of Landsat phenology metrics (2017 map overall accuracy: 89%). ST productivity maps were created with a linear regression model of seed yield (n = 68, R 2 = 0.53, normalized RMSE = 10.5%). The Central Valley-wide estimated area for ST in 2017 was 32,369 ha (29,845-34,893 ha 95% CI), and 13,012 ha (11,628-14,396 ha) for WGSW. Mean ST seed yield ranged from 577 kg/ha in the Delta Basin to 365 kg/ha in the San Joaquin Basin. WGSW area and ST seed yield decreased while ST area increased in critical drought years compared to normal water years (Scheffe's test, P < 0.05). Greatest ST area increases occurred in the Sacramento Valley (~75%). Voluntary water deliveries increased in normal water years, and ST seed yield increased with water supply. Z scores of ST seed yield can be used to evaluate wetland performance and aid resource allocation decisions. Updated maps will support habitat monitoring, conservation planning and water management in future years, which are likely to face greater uncertainty in water availability with climate change.
Environmental sensor networks enjoy widespread deployment as monitoring systems have become easier to design and implement in the field and installation costs have fallen. Unfortunately software systems for data quality assurance have not kept pace with the development of these sensor network technologies and risk compromising the potential of these innovative systems by making it difficult to assess the accuracy and consistency of the data. Lingering uncertainty can constrain the willingness of stakeholders to make operational decisions on the basis of the real-time sensor data -a few negative experiences can do irreparable damage to a project which is attempting to change stakeholder behavior. Management of river salt loads in complex and highly regulated river basins such as the Murray Darling Basin in south-east Australia and the San Joaquin Basin in California, USA present significant challenges to Information Technology infrastructure within resource agencies that often have a poor history of coordination and data sharing. In the San Joaquin Basin -web-based environmental data dissemination initiatives to address salinity issues need to overcome a fear of loss of autonomy as well as data quality assurance and data reliability issues. These environmental decision support issues are contrasted with those facing resource managers in the Murray Darling Basin. This paper describes a new approach to environmental decision support for salinity management in the San Joaquin Basin of California that focuses on web-based data sharing using YSI Econet technology and continuous data quality management using a novel software tool, Aquarius. Commercial turn-key monitoring systems such as YSI EcoNet provide real-time web-access to sensor data as well as providing the owner full control over the way the data is visualized. The same websites use GIS to superimpose the monitoring site locations on maps and local hydrography and allow point and click access to the data collected at each environmental monitoring site. This Information Technology suite of software and hardware work together to provide timely, reliable and high quality data in a manner that can used by stakeholder decision makers to better manage salt export to the San Joaquin River and ensure compliance with State water quality objectives. The technologies developed for this application can be extended to improve compliance with TMDL water quality objectives over entire river basins and should have applicability in any watershed where environmental decision support systems are being developed to assist for stakeholders as part of a coordinated strategy for non-point pollutant load reduction
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