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2

The Link Port LOBO site also has a weather station which allows direct linkage of local

weather with water quality data.

Harbor Branch’s first LOBO site is in the Indian River Lagoon, just outside the Harbor

Branch Channel.

been scientifically proven over time by oceanographers and estuarine researchers to produce the highest caliber needed for oceanographic and coastal data. LOBOs have a national and international presence (in California, Oregon, Delaware, Maine, the west coast of Florida, and Canada) the LOBO units are ideal multi-sensor packages that increase the efficiency of environmental monitoring. LOBOs have the flexibility to substitute or add different sensor instruments as new scientific needs are identified.

Currently we are measuring temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, CDOM (colored dissolved organic matter, or more simply, water color), chlorophyll (indicative of algae in the water column), nutrients (phosphate, nitrate), and current speed and direction. LOBOs are designed to reduce fouling that rapidly occurs in anything deployed into an estuary, minimize operational and maintenance expenses, and provide real-time and retrospective high-accuracy and high-resolution data via a dedicated interactive website. LOBOs can collect data 24/7 and allow real-time observation of significant events, such as water discharge, algal blooms, and storm events so that researchers can determine how these events are related to ecosystem change. Data from our LOBO units in the IRL will integrate into the nationwide Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) through Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association (SECOORA), allowing comparative studies both within Florida and in the nation.

Harbor Branch’s first LOBO went live to the public on June 11, 2013. We chose to put this first unit in the IRL just outside Harbor Branch’s Channel, near what has historically been called the “Link Port Station” and near some other long-term research sites we are working at. The Link Port site is important in scientific studies of the IRL as its proximity next to Harbor Branch has facilitated long-term research at that site since the 1970’s by researchers from many different institutions.

The installation and maintenance of the LOBO network is being done by a group of Harbor Branch scientists, engineers, and support staff. The data being collected will be directly used by Harbor Branch researchers and be freely available, at any time, from any computer or mobile device to all who wish to view or use the data – scientists from other institutions, managers of the IRL, educators, students, and the interested public – simply by going to the following website: http://fau-hboi.loboviz.com. With four months of hourly data now available, we invite you to click to that website and begin your explorations of water quality of the Indian River Lagoon!

3

Part 2 HBOI LOBOviz Home Page: Current Data and Portal for More Information

When you go to http://fau-hboi.loboviz.com (see example below), along the left hand side of the home page you will see all of the most recent readings from our weather station and our sensors below the water:

We report some parameters in two sets of units; one that scientists are more likely to use, while the other is more likely to be used by the public. So, for example, the temperature above on October 9, 2013, at 15:00 Eastern Standard Time was 26.4°C (Celsius) or 79.6°F (Fahrenheit). We use a 24-hour clock, which is the most commonly used time notation in the world: the day runs from midnight to midnight, divided into 24 hours, and indicated by the hours passed since midnight, from 0 to 23. In the U.S., this convention is commonly called “military time”, while most of us use the 12-hour clock (with a.m. and p.m.). Scientists, like the military, prefer to use the 24-hour clock in our work to prevent any ambiguity in time. We also often use Standard Time year-round for consistency and to facilitate use of our data by colleagues in other time zones.

4

Note that you can click on any of the envirnomental parameters and go to a page outside the website which provides information on what that parameter means. For example, click on “Salinity”, and you will go to the Wikipedia entry for salinity, and you can read a brief tutorial on salinity: what it is, how we use salinity to classify water bodies, environmental considerations, references, and further reading. More than you might want to know at one time, but this is an opportunity to fine tune your understanding of what these different parameters are and why they are important.

Other important information on the home page is location information, including a short site description, and an aerial photo and map of the site. If you prefer to see a satellite image of the site, click “Satellite”. If you can’t decide, or if you want the best of both worlds, click “Hybrid”! And don’t forget you can zoom in or out or move in any direction to get a better idea of where this site is relative to your local knowledge. Lastly, another cool feature of our LOBO site is its interface with Google Earth. This is free software and you can easily install by following the details under the “GE” tab. Then click http://fau.loboviz.com/0035.kml and you will be whisked away to the image below. Click our icon and you can get our most current data there rather than going back to the HBOI LOBOviz site.

But that is just the start of what you can do with our data. Our home page provides you with current data, but most of us are also interested in patterns and relationships among the different types of data over time. When you are ready, click the next tab at the top (LOBOVIZ) of the home page. Now the fun really begins!

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11

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12

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15

Part 8 Concluding Remarks

While four months is a very short time series in a dynamic estuary like the Indian River Lagoon, the above “primer” shows how LOBO technology is making important environmental data available to all users, real time, any time. We hope that you will continue to use our time series to get a better understanding of how the Indian River Lagoon functions and how it is impacted by changes in water quality.

While LOBOviz provides a terrific visualization tool, anyone can download any or all of the available data from any of the graphs, by clicking “Data as text” and saving the file on your computer. Another important feature is our Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) program, which you can review by clicking on the “QA/QC” tab on our LOBOviz home page. QA/QC refers to the process or set of processes used to measure and assure the quality of a product (QA) and the process of meeting products and services to consumer expectations (QC). The data made available on this website should be considered provisional for all use. Each year metadata files will be made available to all interested parties.

Working with various partners we will continue to expand our LOBO network of sensors. These capabilities will enable HBOI and other researchers and educators to understand seasonal and long-term variability in water chemistry on the ecosystem functions of the Lagoon. These long-term environmental datasets are needed to observe and predict how these functions are affected by climate change, storms, droughts, and other complex chemical, geological, and biological interactions. In addition, having greatly enhanced, real-time detection of hydrologic and nutrient variability will expand the ability to determine triggers and consequences of acute events (e.g., tropical storms and hurricanes) and help dictate sampling events and experimental designs related to other elements of ecosystem function that might be impacted, such as zooplankton grazing, fish movements, and animal health.

We hope that all interested parties will find our developing network of environmental sensors in the IRL to be useful. To receive metadata information and request any other information, please contact FAU Harbor Branch at: HBOI_IRLO@fau.edu.

This initial LOBO research in the Indian River Lagoon has been supported by FAU Harbor Branch and the Save Our Seas Specialty License Plate Funds.