A major effort underway by the Watershed Sciences and Engineering Program is to continuously monitor water quality at selected locations in the Susquehanna River. Little is known about the water chemistry of the river and how it relates to land use, discharges, and seasonal changes in aquatic plant growth and nutrient loads.

In 2009, we partnered with the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) to configure and install two YSI 6600 water quality sondes and telemetry data logger systems at water treatment plants on the West Branch near Milton and on the North Branch near Danville. The instruments record fluctuations in water quality at 15-minute intervals and are part of the SRBC's "Early Warning System" a network of water quality sondes deployed through the river basin to alert them of any abrupt change in public drinking water supplies.

Each sonde is equipped with five interchangeable sensors which measure water depth, temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, oxidation-reduction potential, and chlorophyl. They receive monthly maintenance and calibration to ensure accurate data.

The water quality program also has uses several "roving" sondes which we deploy at other locations in the watershed. During the summer of 2009, two sondes were deployed for several months below Sunbury and documented that even below the confluence the waters from the North and West branches do not mix.

Preliminary results of the river water quality network have been presented at the annual meeting of the North American Benthological Society and the American Society of Civil Engineers' Hydraulic Measurement and Experimental Methods Conference.

Real-Time Data Feeds

You can view real-time feeds of the river sonde data in two ways: