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APPLICATIONS OF AUTOMATED BIOMONITORING FOR WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
Citation:
Morgan, E. L., D. B. Ososanya, D. B. George, J. Frolik, W. T. Waller, J. J. Allen, AND J M. Lazorchak. APPLICATIONS OF AUTOMATED BIOMONITORING FOR WATERSHED MANAGEMENT. Presented at IUGG Assembly, Birmingham, United Kingdom, July 18-30, 1999.
Description:
Over three decades of progress have been made since John Cairns and his associates first coined a new scientific endeavor known as automated biomonitoring. Implementations have ranged from designs for early warning of toxicity in wastewater discharges using fish as sensors, to configurations for automated bioassays using bivalve mollusk or other invertebrates. More recently, remote biosensing devices have been utilized in watershed ecological assessment networks instrumented with water quality monitoring stations and satellite data retrieval. Presently, a new generation of intelligent biosensing systems is being deployed for near, real-time continuous biological monitoring at remote river platforms. One system, built in cooperation with the the University of North Texas, USEPA, and Tennessee Technological University uses digital signal processing and fast Fourier transforms to generate power spectrum densities (PSD) that represent aquatic animal functions, i.e., cardiac and breathing patterns. These PSDs are used as functional features for input into artificial neural networks (ANN). Additionally, values for water hydrograph, chemical/physical characteristics and ecological assessments are used as vectors to the ANN. Once ANN are trained using stressed and non-stressed patterns from biosensors, the system can be used to judge adverse water quality and provide a control sequence capable of triggering an automated water sampler. The control sequence can also alert concerned parties so that samples can be retrieved and processed for causative agents, and corrective action taken when warranted.