Sensors in the Stream: The High-Frequency Wave of the Present

TLDR

Recent advances in sensor technology have revolutionized hydrologic science by enabling high‑frequency, high‑resolution measurements of physical, chemical, and biological parameters across watersheds, thereby enhancing our ability to observe and model stream processes. The study synthesizes emerging sensor technologies across multiple applications to forecast how they will improve understanding, prediction, and restoration of watershed and stream systems. The authors synthesize insights from emerging sensor technologies across diverse applications to project future advances in watershed and stream system understanding, prediction, and restoration.

Abstract

New scientific understanding is catalyzed by novel technologies that enhance measurement precision, resolution or type, and that provide new tools to test and develop theory. Over the last 50 years, technology has transformed the hydrologic sciences by enabling direct measurements of watershed fluxes (evapotranspiration, streamflow) at time scales and spatial extents aligned with variation in physical drivers. High frequency water quality measurements, increasingly obtained by in situ water quality sensors, are extending that transformation. Widely available sensors for some physical (temperature) and chemical (conductivity, dissolved oxygen) attributes have become integral to aquatic science, and emerging sensors for nutrients, dissolved CO 2, turbidity, algal pigments, and dissolved organic matter are now enabling observations of watersheds and streams at time scales commensurate with their fundamental hydrological, energetic, elemental, and biological drivers. Here we synthesize insights from emerging technologies across a suite of applications, and envision future advances, enabled by sensors, in our ability to understand, predict, and restore watershed and stream systems.