Scientists at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) have made functional, a first of its kind, Water Quality Nowcasting System (WQNS) for environmental monitoring and forecasting the east and west sea coastlines.
The state-of-the-monitoring system intends to check both the natural influence and the impact of industrial effluents, urbanization, river discharge and agricultural run off on the water quality of the Indian coastline covering a range of environmental conditions and tourist-intensive zones.
It is done with the help of moored buoys equipped with different physical-biogeochemical sensors, data telemetry systems integrated with satellite-based observations for real-time 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.
Moored buoys: sentinels of the sea
The continuous real time data generated from these moored buoys observations act as sentinels of the sea as the cutting-edge 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, chlorophyll-a, 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.
The coastal waters along the eastern and western coats have contrasting characteristics in terms of seasonality, magnitude of river influx, circulation pattern, and degree of anthropogenic activity. Hence, understanding these processes and forecasting their occurrence is necessary to secure the health of coastal waters, habitats, marine resources, plus the safety of tourists, he explained.
Real-time data is transmitted to a central processing facility at INCOIS here and after necessary quality control, it is disseminated through the institute website. Preliminary results from WQNS had shown short-term changes in the water column of depleted oxygen levels within a day in coastal waters off Kochi during the monsoon period. High levels of carbondioxide has been found to be let out into the atmosphere associated with the mixing of water, driven by local depression in the coastal waters off Vishakhapatnam.
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 research, management, and policy development beyond immediate applications as the real-time data being generated enables informed decision-making for assessing coastal ecosystem health and sustainable coastal resource management.
The research project was also published as a paper in the latest issue of ‘Journal of Environmental Management’ in its latest issue. Other scientists involved in the study are – VVSS Sarma, Aneesh A. Lotliker, K.R. Muraleedharan, Alakes Samanta, Sanjiba Kumar, Balair Singh, S. Shiva Prasad, T.T. Gireesh Kumar, Susmita Raulo, S.P. Vighneshwar, R. Venkat Seshu, Murali Krishna, N. Kiran Kumar, R. Chandrasekhar Naik, Sudheer Joseph, K. Annapurnaiah, E. Pattabhirama Rao and T. Srinivasa Kumar (INCOIS Director).
