Setting up a remote water quality sensor network

[Ariel Levi Simons]

Hey all,

Steve Boyes, of National Geographic, is working on a project to protect one of Africa's last untouched wildernesses: Botswana's Okavango Delta. It is an area that was mostly inaccessible to humans until about 100 years ago. It is this amazing wetland delta area that has one of the most healthy elephant and hippo populations in the world. One of his colleagues, Shah Shelbe, is helping him with an effort to build the case around UNESCO World Heritage site protection status around the region. Shah's traveling to Botswana with Steve in late August, with hopes for a large scale expedition and implementation in 2015.  

What we are looking to do is build some low cost solar powered sensors (arduino, GPRS) for water flow, salinity, and water level to deploy in the delta and track changes. The data from these will be plotted realtime online for the public to see, and it will play a major part in the UNESCO application and some upcoming NatGeo documentary efforts. If successful, it would establish the largest protected area in the world. 
Here is some more information: 
http://blog.ted.com/2014/05/02/explorer-steve-boyes-takes-us-on-an-epic-journey/ 
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/blog/okavango/ 

Originally they were aiming to do something like this here:

http://czo.stroudcenter.org/sensors/the-sensor-blog/

With the hope to track the water parameters I covered below (and maybe air quality as well). We want it to use cell networks to be able to be tracked real time on the Into The Okavango website, although we have some data scientists working that part now. 

The trip/funding situation recently materialized pretty quickly, so it'll need to be a quick effort to get these prototypes done. They'd love to work with Public Lab and IO Rodeo.

Please email me if you're interested in getting involved on this project or if you have any further questions.  I can do the introductions.

Thanks!

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Ariel Levi Simons

[matthew.greetham]

Sounds like a great project - I've managed to find the time to put a couple of vaguely similar projects on my blog recently - flowrc.co.uk. 

If this is the type of thing they are after - I'd love to be part of the community that makes it happen

(I am also a environmental engineer, which may come in handy)

Dr. Matt

[Ariel Levi Simons]

Matt,

Sounds good.  Are you in LA?  We're all hoping to meet next week.

Thank you,

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Ariel Levi Simons

[Christina Chu]

Levi, 

I'm also very interested in this project. I hack arduino type projects on the side and I also run a biochemical lab. In addition, I've worked as volunteer in East Africa, so this project in particular is of interest. I'm based in San Francisco.

On Sunday, June 22, 2014 7:03:03 AM UTC-7, Levi Simons wrote:

Matt,

Sounds good.  Are you in LA?  We're all hoping to meet next week.

Thank you,

[Jeffrey Warren]

Wow -- great to hear! I'm CC'ing the waterquality list -- maybe it's an opportunity to collaborate with/contribute to the open water project!

[Yagiz Sutcu]

Some of you may find it related:

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/new-nasa-images-highlight-us-air-quality-improvement/index.html