Field Capabilities

The Center for Water and the Environment maintains a wide range of field instrumentation and capabilities to support hydrologic, geomorphic, and ecohydrologic studies. These capabilities are overseen by Dr. Ricardo Gonzalez-Pinzon.

Hydrologic Monitoring - The CWE maintains a wide array of instrumentation to support quantification of hydrologic processes including Campbell Scientific weather stations, Sontek-YSI acoustic doppler velocimeters (ADV), Marsh-McBirney Flow Trackers, Federal snow samplers, piezometers, double-ring infiltrometers, tension infiltrometers, surveying equipment, and unmanned arial vehicles equipped with multi-spectral and infrared cameras.

Geomorphic Monitoring - To support stream monitoring and restoration efforts, the CWE maintains instrumentation and expertise for characterizing stream geomorphology including rocker-boxes, gravelometers, freeze corers, split-spoon samplers, high-precision GPS units, and UAVs capable of high-resolution structure-from-motion photogrammetry.

Ecohydrologic Monitoring - To study aquatic biogeochemistry and stream metabolism, the CWE maintains and deploys high-frequency in-situ water quality sondes, including YSI EXO 2s, Seabird Suna V2s, Turner Designs C-Senses, Onset HOBO U20s and U26s, and OTT EcoNs, as well as meteorological sensors such as METER's QSO-S PAR sensors. We also use grab sampling equipment such as ISCO autosamplers and The Integrator.