Riverscope
“The Hudson River is such a phenomenal river system to study," said Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer Ph.D., director of the Darrin Fresh Water Institute at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and principal investigator for Riverscope. "It starts at the headwaters of Adirondack Park, it has major tributaries, it has a freshwater portion, a tidal portion, agriculture, power plants, and ends up in New York Harbor. If you were to set out to design a test bed that is incredibly interesting to study, it would be the Hudson River.”
Riverscope was a pilot project between The Beacon Institute and two of the top research institutions along the Hudson River — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades -- where satellite centers for The Beacon Institute are being established. Remote sensing devices were placed in the river at monitoring stations, where data such as sediment movement, water flow, and chemical composition were delivered in real time to researchers. In Riverscope, scientists collaborated among interdisciplinary teams to address broad research questions.
Riverscope scientists studied the spread of zebra mussels to illustrate the complexity involved in studying river and estuarine systems and the need for a collaborative scientific approach. A non-native species introduced into the Hudson and other U.S. rivers by trans-Atlantic ships from Russia, the mussels have few predators and consume large quantities of microscopic food and oxygen, thereby disrupting the balance of the ecosystem by out-competing populations of native mussels, fish and other organisms. Riverscope researchers tracked how quickly the mussel populations spread along the bottom of the river by following the flow rate of the river and determining the age of mussel larvae samples. This study engaged an interdisciplinary team that included microbiologists, chemists, data communications specialists and engineers to develop robots to troll the river's bottom for samples.
In addition to studying zebra mussels, Riverscope researchers collected data in two other areas. First, they studied how river sediment moves, which will help researchers monitor PCB contamination before, during and after the scheduled dredging of PCBs in the Hudson. Second, they tested the levels of certain elements of water chemistry, such as chlorophyll A. This element increases along with algae growth in the river, a strong indicator of possibly harmful levels of nutrients introduced by agricultural runoff.
Riverscope's comprehensive data models and computer simulated display have set the stage for reconstructing river history, forecasting critical environmental events and guiding civic leaders in responding to threats to our water supply. From this pilot endeavor, The Beacon Institute and collaborating scientists are developing empirical models that generalize the behavior of river and estuary systems and new technologies to apply that knowledge to solving problems in the Hudson and other river systems around the world.
