NexSens completes redeployment of USACE temperature profiling buoys

Buoy redeployment

NexSens field engineers have recently completed a redeployment of five data buoys for the US Army Corps of Engineers, Pittsburgh District. The USACE utilizes the data buoys to monitor the yearly evolution of temperature stratification in various reservoirs.

The Army Corps operates several reservoirs with dams that are constructed for selective withdrawal and have output gates at multiple levels in the water column. NexSens was awarded a contract last year to handle the installation and maintenance of buoy-based temperature profiling systems in several reservoirs across Pennsylvania. As part of the contract, NexSens provides seasonal deployment and removal services, as well as online data hosting through a WQData Web datacenter.

The buoys are located in Tygart Lake, Berlin Lake, Tionesta Creek Lake, Loyalhanna Lake and Shenango Reservoir.

Monitoring temperature stratification is critical to ensuring healthy aquatic chemistry and biology. Dissolved oxygen can commonly become depleted in deeper layers of stratified lakes during the summer, which can devastate fish downstream. The data buoys provide a way to monitor and control the lake temperature at various stratification levels to avoid this.

Each buoy is capable of delivering real-time temperature stratification data. They are equipped with NexSens T-Node temperature strings that measure water temperature at various depths in the water column. The T-Nodes interface with NexSens SDL submersible data loggers in the buoys that transmit data every hour via license-free spread-spectrum radio to a host computer running iChart software.