Abstract
To address the challenges of environmental degradation, creation of a sustainable urban environment, and increased public engagement and awareness, a mass-oriented, user-friendly and cloud-based data platform has been developed and deployed to provide integrative water quality data in one of the most critical urban corridors of the Laurentian Great Lakes system. In this paper, we describe the data platform developed for the watershed and connecting channels between Lake Huron and Lake Erie, including the St. Clair River, Lake St. Chair, and the Detroit River. This data platform greatly facilitates the access of data across data providers and agencies. Several example applications are provided of platform use for temporal and spatial characterization of intake water source quality and urban beach health through consideration of Escherichia coli, Dissolved Oxygen, pH, and blue-green algae detections along the Huron-to-Erie corridor. Although data collection for each of these parameters was designed for unique purposes and supported through varied agencies, this paper shows the collective advantages of applying the data beyond the original scope of collection.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Erb Family Foundation and Wayne State University. We acknowledge the contributions of Kelly Karl, Bill Parkus, and Amy Mangus of SEMCOG. In addition, we appreciate the input of Fondriest Environmental and the water utilities along the Huron to Erie corridor.
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Appendix
Appendix
Given the difference of both data source platform and the sonde model, BGA data associated with two units, cell/ml and RFU. Marysville, fortunately, provides both units at the same time. To make the comparison consistency, the quantitative relationship between the two units is set up according to the BGA information provided by Marysville. Let x represent the BGA value in RFU units, and y represent the BGA value in cell/ml units:
Using this formula, the BGA values for Monroe are successfully represented by RFU (Appendix Fig. 14).
The relationship between cell/ml and RFU of BGA
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Xu, L., Miller, C.J., Olson, J. et al. Huron-to-Erie Water Quality Data Platform. Environ. Process. 5, 465–481 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40710-018-0322-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40710-018-0322-7