In Situ Water Quality Measurements Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) System

Abstract

An unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted water quality measurement system (UAMS) was developed for in situ surface water quality measurement. A custom-built hexacopter was equipped with an open-source electronic sensors platform to measure the temperature, electrical conductivity (EC), dissolved oxygen (DO), and pH of water. Electronic components of the system were coated with a water-resistant film, and the hexacopter was assembled with flotation equipment. The measurements were made at thirteen sampling waypoints within a 1.1 ha agricultural pond. Measurements made by an open-source multiprobe meter (OSMM) attached to the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) were compared to the measurements made by a commercial multiprobe meter (CMM). Percent differences between the OSMM and CMM measurements for DO, EC, pH, and temperature were 2.1%, 3.43%, 3.76%, and <1.0%, respectively. The collected water quality data was used to interpret the spatial distribution of measurements in the pond. The UAMS successfully made semiautonomous in situ water quality measurements from predetermined waypoints. Water quality maps showed homogeneous distribution of measured constituents across the pond. The concept presented in this paper can be applied to the monitoring of water quality in larger surface waterbodies.

Autonomous In Situ Measurements of Noncontaminant Water Quality Indicators and Sample Collection with a UAV

“…The sensor node consisted of probes and a microcontroller platform ( Figure 2) and was capable of obtaining measurements for DO, pH, EC, and temperature [34]. The microcontroller platform was placed in a sealed waterproof box on top of the UAV to isolate it from exposure to moisture during water landings.…”

“…The UAV-assisted in situ water quality assessment system reported in [34] and the UAV-assisted water sampling mechanisms reported in [35] can be combined to extend the functionality of the UAV-assisted water quality assessments. Measurements made by the sensor node can be used to make decisions to collect water samples, thus increasing the flight range of the UAV.…”

Coral Reef Monitoring, Reef Assessment Technologies, and Ecosystem-Based Management

“…Current work attempts to integrate multi-domain unmanned systems with a variety of environmental and physical sensors to collect fine-scale data, enhancing our understanding of environmental stressor impacts on coastal coral reef health. Unmanned systems can be tasked with collecting physical data such as imagery, and bathymetry data, in addition to environmental data such as oxygen, temperature, chlorophyll, turbidity, and salinity (Grasmueck et al, 2006;Chirayath and Earle, 2016;Koparan et al, 2018;Levy et al, 2018;Monk et al, 2018).…”

How can geologic decision making under uncertainty be improved?

“…UAVs improve the efficiency of traditional "boots on the ground" reconnaissance and mapping procedures by providing access to data in large or inaccessible areas quickly. Typically data comes in the form of high resolution 2D imagery (available with commercial non-autonomous UAVs), but because UAVs have the flexibility to carry different sensors and devices, they can be customized to collect other forms of data, including hyperspectral images (Näsi et al, 2015), LiDAR (Wang et al, 2017), air quality measurement (Villa et al, 2016), and subsurface water quality measurements (Koparan et al, 2018). See Jiménez López and Mulero-Pázmány (2019) for additional sensors and devices that can be coupled with UAVs.…”